Dreams of Jacob
by Knackard
Summary: Jacob Black is a fixture of Nessie's dreams long before she meets him. Canon-compliant, BD and beyond. Rated M for future scenes.
1. First Impressions

**Hey, y'all! Today is my twenty-fourth birthday. To celebrate I've decided to start posting a little story I've been working on, one which, appropriately enough, begins with a birth. ****I hope that for those of you who are keeping up with The Slow Burn, this will provide a welcome palate-cleanser from all the death/gore/destruction/sexual frustration/cheap laughs. Also, proof that I do have a soul, withered and rotten though it may be.  
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**Enjoy!  
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She can hardly tell the difference between sleeping and waking, except that when she's awake everything is black or dark red, and when she's asleep there are thousands of lights that swirl beneath her eyelids in patterns too elusive to recognize. Nothing looks like anything; even if it did, she is too little and inexperienced to know it, because she hasn't been born yet.

Before long, she can hear things, and not long after that she can differentiate between the sounds. Some of them are voices. Some of the voices she loves more than others. The close, loving, raspy woman's voice, the voice that sounds tired and happy, that one is her favorite for a while, just ahead of the ringing, protective voice.

But one day she hears a new voice, and it leaves them all behind. It is warm, and dark, and low; it vibrates through the womb and into her ears, her belly, her feet, and it makes her kick and squirm with happiness. When she does this, she hears distressed sounds from the raspy voice, and then the dark low voice sounds distressed too, and it is all so terrible that she can't move for fear of making it worse.

The first dream she can remember is of meeting that warm, dark voice. What will it look like? What will it say? She hopes that voice will like her, because she loves it already. In her dream, the voice feels slippery and soft, like the skin on her tummy, and it looks like burning red swirls that coalesce into ten fingers and ten toes. Fingers and toes are her favorite things to play with, her only things to play with, and she is certain that this wonderful voice will have them in abundance. She doesn't speak its language yet, but she is sure she can learn.

* * *

After a while there isn't room for her anymore, and she is terribly uncomfortable, and one day she moves a little too fast by accident, and then there is a horrid loud sound, and the hard curved thing she has been living in suddenly has cracks in it. She panics because the cracks are getting bigger and pinching her skin, and it feels bad and the warm dark voice is getting louder and scareder, which makes her scared, too. Then she is lifted into a cold place where there is a bright, hurting light, the brightest she's ever seen, a thousand times brighter than her dreams. It startles her and hurts her eyes, and she lets out a yell to scare the light away. The next thing she sees is a pale round shape with two brown things in it and a hole at the bottom, and the hole opens and the raspy voice comes out of it, and suddenly she realizes this must be what the raspy voice looks like. She is happy to have this knowledge, so happy that she leans forward and bites the raspy voice somewhere below its face. It tastes so good she tries to bite it again, but she has already been snatched away, handed to the ringing protective voice and hustled into a place that is blessedly dark again.

The ringing protective voice is pretty, she is sure of that. Her vision is getting clearer all the time, and she can make out that the hole at the bottom is colored red with white things in it, and the two dark spots at the top are black with gold around them. She never knew there were so many colors in all the world; for her whole life, the only color she could see was red.

She is eager to find out about colors, and what she is most eager to find out is what color the warm dark voice will turn out to be. She can't wait to meet it. She looks around, her eyes darting from shadow to shadow, always looking for the voice, always disappointed. The ringing protective voice holds her in arms that are cool and smooth, and strokes the top of her head with careful hands, and whispers pretty sounds in her ears. But around the pretty sounds she can hear other things, panicked sounds from up above, rustling sounds from far away, and a heartbeat.

She knows all about heartbeats, because she likes to listen to her own heartbeat when she is sleepy, but this heartbeat is a tiny bit different. It's louder, and faster, and layered over the top of it she can hear hoarse breathing and quiet steps. She looks over at the heartbeat, and she sees that it belongs to the warm dark voice. She doesn't know how she knows, because it hasn't said anything yet, but she knows. It is mostly colored red and black, like the place she lived before she was born, and that makes her feel safe and reassured.

She is positive that the voice and the heartbeat will love her as much as she loves it. And she can see already that it has plenty of fingers and toes.

* * *

Soon, she knows that her name is Renesmee. She is learning fast: she knows about names, and what things look like, and she is very good at grabbing hold of shiny swingy things, even though she is only a few days old.

The warm dark voice is named Jake, and he calls her Nessie, which she likes better than the longer version. She likes when he is holding her, because she can take bites out of his skin. It tastes good, sort of sharp and salty. He doesn't mind when she bites her. He thinks it's funny, and tells her so. He thinks everything is funny. As far as Nessie is concerned, the whole world is full of nothing but beautiful smiles from the pale ones, and rumbly, tickly laughter from Jake.

She never hears the raspy voice again, because the next time she hears it, it isn't rasping. For a while she's not even sure if it's the same voice, but then she sees the face through the window and, even though the eyes are red now and the skin is all sparkly, it's definitely the same face. Rosalie, the protective one, is holding her up to see what's going on outside. Jake is standing there, talking to the no-longer-raspy voice, calling it Bella, when Bella tries to attack him. And just like that, she learns that sometimes people can hurt each other. She is angry at Bella for trying to harm her Jake, and she is relieved that Seth jumped in the way. She forgives Bella quickly, because she loves her, but she wishes she didn't have to learn about hurting people quite so soon.

She is taking a nap later on in Jake's arms while her parents are gone and she has a frightening dream. In her dream, Bella attacks Jake again and again, and sometimes Seth can't stop her in time, and Jake is covered with blood. She knows all about blood, especially Jake's, but she doesn't want to see it spilled indiscriminately on the ground like that. And then, even worse, she dreams that _she _is the one being attacked, and Jake knows that she is too little to fight so he jumps in the way like Seth did. She is so scared to see Jake lying on the ground, bloody and bony and gasping, that she scares herself awake. Jake wakes up at the same time she does; he was dozing, his head back and a line of drool on his cheek, and although she doesn't cry out loud he can tell she is upset.

She touches his cheek to show him the dream, and he cuddles her to his great big beating heart and says, "I know, Nessie. I dreamed it too. I promise I won't let anyone hurt you."

Nessie knows by this that he doesn't get it, not really, so she touches him again, shows him just the part where he is hurt on the ground. It's painful to relive, but it's important that he understand.

"You're worried about me?" he says. She purses her tiny lips. "Oh, Ness, don't worry about me. It's pretty hard to kill a werewolf." She knows that _werewolf _is what Jake is, and Seth, and Leah, and the other red-and-black people.

She is comforted by that, so comforted that she takes an extra big bite out of his arm to celebrate. But she knows that "pretty hard" is not the same as "impossible," and so she touches him again, right where the bite-mark is already healing, and shows him a new image, one where _he _is attacked and _she _jumps in the way.

"Aw, Ness, you're too little-" he starts to say. She is impatient with this reasoning, and shows him another image, where she is ten feet high, each of her delicate baby fingers as long as a plantain. He chuckles, but he seems to realize that she's serious, because he says, "How about this, I'll teach you how to fight when you get bigger. Would you feel safer then?"

In answer, she smiles and cuddles closer to him and goes back to sleep.

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**I don't know yet where this story is going to go, but if there's interest, leave me a review and I'll keep working on it.**


	2. Learning Curve

**Hey, folks! Thanks for your reviews! I've decided to go on with this story, as a nice antidote to some of the more heavy stuff I've been writing, and because y'all seem interested. I'll try to update about once a week. Just so you know, I am s****kipping all that disappointing, dull, BD Volturi crap because that whole business so infuriates me that just thinking about it gives me angry diarrhea. So it is briefly referenced in this chapter, but that will be all.**

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Renesmee loves playing on the reservation. It's her very favorite place to go, aside from hunting with Jake. Her growth has slowed down a lot, and she met Nahuel, the other hybrid, so she knows that she won't have to outlive Jake. (That, she is convinced, would be a fate worse than death.) Her mom and dad don't like her to go anywhere without them, but they aren't allowed on the rez; none of the Cullens are. They finally said she can go play with Jake and Seth and Claire and all the others, as long as she calls them once every hour on her cell phone. She never forgets to call, because if she forgets even one time, they might not let her come back, and there is so much to do on the rez. There is fishing with Grandpa Charlie and Mr. Black, and making cookies with Emily, and races with Seth and Jake. She loves to play in the garage with Jake while he is tinkering with his cars; by now she can hand him all the right tools before he even asks for them.

One day, she is very tired from the racing and wrestling she's been doing all day. She is too old for naps now, but she's so tired and Jake is humming a very quiet Working Song as he clinks his tools around, and there's a big fly buzzing around one of the windows. Before she knows it, she is dreaming that she has taken Jake's Rabbit out for a drive, but she doesn't know how to drive it and the brake pedal won't work, and she crashes it into a tree.

She wakes up feeling guilty and says, "Jake, can you teach me how to drive? I don't want to crash your Rabbit into a tree."

Once Jake is done laughing at this non-sequitur, he agrees that yes, as soon as her feet reach the pedals, he will teach her how to drive, just as he taught her how to climb up trees without using her hands, and how to catch and skin a deer, and how to know a crescent wrench from a socket wrench.

Then she tells him a story, because he told the last few and it's her turn. She makes it an extra good one, with lots of battles and a fair amount of improvised singing. She knows all about making up songs on the fly; it's a game she plays with her father. Jake hums along while she sings her made-up verses, and there is a harmony between her high, clear voice and his low, dark and warm one. After that, they practice throwing each other around for a while: first, he throws her as hard as he can into the forest, and she has to grab passing tree branches to brake. Then, she picks him up and throws him into the river. This is all good practice for if an enemy ever throws her, and it makes her stronger every day. She finds this much more useful than the Calculus her dad makes her learn, and it is certainly more fun.

* * *

One afternoon, her parents drop her off at the treaty line between Cullen and Quileute territory. Jake can't meet her because he won't be done patrolling for another hour. So Emily comes to get her, strapping her securely into a back seat of her car. Emily has Claire for the day, and Claire is strapped in to a car-seat that would keep her safe even if it went over a cliff. Claire greets Nessie by offering to share her Goldfish.

Emily understands Nessie better than a lot of people, because she is an imprint too, and so is Claire. The three of them are good friends.

Together, they make some pizzas for the wolves to eat. Nessie doesn't eat much human food, but she likes Emily's cooking a lot, and she helps herself to pieces of pepperoni and sausage when Emily's back is turned.

Emily must have eyes in the back of her head, though, because she says without turning around, "You're going to give yourself a tummyache, Nessie." Nessie guiltily lowers the handful of raw bacon she was about to put in her mouth. Claire watches the proceedings with interest.

"No I'm not," Nessie says defensively.

"It's raw," says Emily. "Don't you want to wait until it's cooked?"

"No," declares Nessie. "I like it raw."

"Well, _I _want you to wait until it's cooked," says Emily decisively. Nessie feels suddenly rebellious. She is, in general, an even-tempered child, but she wants to eat raw bacon and no one is going to stop her, certainly not Emily. She is only one year old, but her body is more like four, and her physical strength is far beyond even an adult human's. With an obstinate look on her face, she crams the whole handful in her mouth. Emily spins around and watches Nessie chew for a while. She takes so long to do anything that Nessie is prematurely convinced she has won.

Then, without a word, Emily takes Claire's hand and leads her out of the room. Nessie is confused. Isn't Emily going to say anything? Aren't they going to finish making their pizzas?

"Hey, wait!" she calls, running after them. She catches up to them at the front door; they are getting bundled up for the fall weather. Claire is obligingly sticking her foot into the sneaker Emily holds steady for her. The strings that hold her mittens to her coat flop around every time she moves. "Where are you going?" Nessie asks plaintively.

"I don't want to spend time with a disrespectful little girl," says Emily firmly. "Claire and I are going to go play outside. And you can stay in here and eat raw bacon all by yourself."

"Don't be dispespectful," Claire agrees solemnly, her voice muffled by the high coat collar which covers her mouth. "Then you can play."

Nessie's feelings of rebellion are wiped away by the heartbreak that Emily's words inflict. They're _leaving_ her? _Alone?_

She stares numbly as Emily finishes dressing Claire and puts on her own coat. She can't believe she is being left alone. Who will she talk to? She watches them go outside. Emily begins raking fallen leaves into a pile for Claire to jump into. The day is overcast but the leaves are brilliant, red and bright yellow. Claire is giggling and screaming, her plump four-year-old legs a blur of movement as she dives into the pile. The handful of bacon Nessie ate is sitting uncomfortably in her stomach, and she wants to throw up, but that is probably more from dejection than indigestion.

Then, to put the cherry on top of Nessie's misery, a big dark-brown wolf comes charging out of the forest and joins in the romp. Quil must have just come off patrol. Nessie has never felt so left-out in her whole life. Emily doesn't want to play with her! She's made a terrible mistake!

Forlornly she sits on the floor and puts her face in her hands. Fat tears begin to trickle from her eyes and seep through her fingers. Soon, she is sobbing, convinced that she has ruined everything, that Emily will never let her help bake again. She'll have to bake with _Grandmother_, and Grandmother isn't _nearly _as fun as Emily.

She is sobbing so loudly that she doesn't hear the front door open or the soft steps of bare feet into the living room. She feels big warm hands on her hair and looks up. Jake is crouched beside her with concern in his eyes. Nessie tries to stifle her sobs, but they just come faster and louder.

Jake reaches out and plucks her off the floor as if she weighed no more than a doll. He pats her back and makes quieting sounds, and after a while she calms down, hiccupping herself into silence.

"What happened?" Jake asks her. She looks out the window. Emily, Claire and Quil have been joined by Seth and Leah. They are having so much fun she can't stand it.

"Emily won't let me play with her," Nessie says.

"Why is that?" Jake asks.

"Because she's mean_,_" Nessie says.

Jake gives her a discerning look. "That doesn't sound like the Emily I know," he says pointedly.

She hangs her head and whispers contritely, "I was disrespectful." She places her hand on Jake's cheek and thinks, _I took the bacon and she said not to and I ate it and now she won't love me anymore. _She heaves a shuddering sigh and rests her head on Jake's shoulder.

"Boy, Ness," says Jake soothingly. "That sure sounds like a problem." Nessie nods mutely. "But it's only a _little _problem," he goes on. "I bet there's something you could do that would make Emily feel better." Nessie leans back to look at him, hardly daring to hope. She hasn't considered this possibility.

"Like what?" she asks.

"Well," says Jake thoughtfully, "It sounds to me like you hurt her feelings when you were disobedient. What should you do when you hurt someone's feelings?"

"I should...apologize?" answers Nessie doubtfully.

Jake smiles. "I think that sounds like a really good plan," he says. "Why don't we go do that?"

"I want _you _to do it," Nessie says imperiously.

"I'm not the one who was disobedient," Jake points out. "You have to do it yourself or it doesn't count."

Nessie glares at him, which only makes him laugh, but she has an uneasy suspicion that he is right. And so, resigned to her fate and determined to get it over with as soon as possible, she wriggles out of Jake's arms. She tries to run out the door in her sockfeet, but Jake makes her wait and put on her shoes. Then he makes her put on her sweater. He tries to make her wear a hat, but she runs away before he can get it on her head. She rockets across the lawn, straight through the pile of leaves, and slams into Emily's knees.

"Augh!" cries Emily, staggering.

Nessie clings to her legs and says, "I'm sorry I disrespected you, Emily! Please will you still love me?" Then she looks up at Emily with big limpid eyes. She awaits Emily's answer with bated breath.

Emily takes a long time to consider. "We-ell," she says at last, "Will you try really hard to be more respectful next time?" Nessie nods earnestly. She'll _never, ever _be bad again. Never! "Okay," Emily relents, her scarred face breaking into half a sunny smile. "I forgive you." She bends down to Nessie's level and gives her a tight hug. "Do you want to play with us?" she asks.

"Uh huh," Ness says. But before she runs off, she adds, "And you still love me?"

"Of course I do, silly goose!" Emily exclaims. "Now let's make the biggest pile of leaves we can. Let's see if we can make it bigger than Quil and Claire's, huh?" Happily, Ness agrees. She is so eager to make the biggest pile of leaves that she climbs up all the trees nearby and shakes their branches vigorously, knocking loose leaves to the ground. When dinnertime rolls around, there are four giant heaps of golden leaves, five hungry werewolves, and zero pizzas to eat. But they order out, and everyone goes home satisfied.

* * *

A few days later, Nessie is helping Emily bake a cake. Emily lets her lick the beaters, and the raw cake batter is really good, so Nessie starts to take a spoon to the bowl.

Without turning around, Emily says, "I don't think so."

Nessie grumbles mutinously, but she does drop the spoon.

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**Writing a four-year-old is kind of weirdly satisfying, because I have to deal with annoying, entitled kids all day for my job. (Actually, ALL kids are annoying and entitled. The challenge is getting them to grow out of it.) I don't want to write a Nessie Sue, but on the other hand, I'm not going to go head-to-head with unmanageable kids all day and then come home and use my free time to write about ****_more_**** unmanageable kids. **

**I hope I got an acceptable balance between believable four-year-old self-absorption and likeability. What do ****_you_**** think of Emily's handling of the situation? After all, it's not as if she can physically overpower Nessie. Also, who wants raw cake batter? My treat.**


	3. Intervention

**Hey everyone! We've had some weather and attendant power outages and disruption-to-life here on the eastern seaboard of the US of A, so this is going up a trifle later than I expected. Luckily the city I live in was mostly unharmed by the storm. I hope you all stayed safe (if you were in the path of Sandy) and stayed awesome.**

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The summer before Nessie turns two, she makes friends with a little girl on the rez named Ruth. Ruth is ten years old and a cousin of Seth and Leah. To an outside observer Nessie would appear to be eight or nine years old. She absolutely idolizes Ruth. Ruth is really smart; even though Nessie knows more school things than Ruth, like geometry and biology and classical literature, Ruth knows more life things. For example, she knows how to make a really long string of phlegm-y spit and suck it back in before it touches the ground. Nessie can't do this, but not for lack of trying: her saliva is just too different from a human's. Ruth also knows how to belch the alphabet, another skill Nessie's body is ill-equipped to duplicate.

Ruth tolerates Nessie's tagging along because there are certain things Nessie is very good at, like climbing all the way up to the tallest branches of trees to knock down fruits that would otherwise be out of reach. And the game room at the Cullen mansion is a temple of pleasure to one such as Ruth, whose parents won't buy her any gaming system more advanced than a Nintendo64.

But Ruth disapproves of the way Nessie always has adults trailing around behind her, usually Jake or Emily or, god forbid, one of her _parents_.

"You're a teacher's pet," Ruth informs Nessie one day. The scathing censure in her voice cows Nessie.

"No!" she says. "I don't even go to school!"

Ruth's eyes widen at this fact which was heretofore unknown and unguessed by her. A little girl who doesn't have to go to school is an exciting novelty. She is instantly jealous, which prompts her to strongly assert her own superiority as a means of balancing things out.

"Well, you can be a teacher's pet without a teacher," she says. "You're a _Jacob's _pet, anyways."

Nessie frankly agrees with this fact, but it has never before occurred to her to be a liability. There is no mistaking the scorching condemnation in Ruth's voice, however. She distracts Ruth by suggesting that they have a rubber-band-shooting contest. She keeps losing because in her preoccupation she keeps snapping her rubber bands.

When Jake gets off patrol and hour or so later, he comes straight to see Nessie as usual. Nessie is just about to run to Jake when she catches the look of haughty satisfaction on Ruth's face and pauses. She loves Jake, but after all he _is _a grown-up; or at least, even if he is only eighteen he is still a grown-up compared to her. She doesn't want to look teacher's-pet-ish in front of Ruth. So she mimics Ruth's haughty expression, waves casually to Jake, and turns her back on him.

"Wanna play MarioKart?" she suggests, and they both go into the game room. Jacob starts to follow after them, but Nessie closes the door in his face. When the door's latch catches, there is an answering catch in Nessie's heart. She feels absolutely dreadful, like she's just stabbed herself in the gut. She forces herself to settle into the game with Ruth, who is blissfully unsuspicious of the battle raging within her playmate.

Finally, after a half-hour of distracted, tense playing (Ruth beats her every time), she excuses herself to use the bathroom. She fairly sprints out of the room and begins looking for Jake, following his scent around the house like a bloodhound.

She finds him in the family room on the second floor, joking and laughing with her mother, Seth and Emmett. She almost trips over her feet in her hurry and launches herself at him at top speed. The beer he was holding goes flying—Emmett catches it—and he lets out a surprised _Oof! _as she burrows into his arms.

"Hey Nessie," he says pleasantly when he has disentangled his little assailant. "Having fun with Ruth?"

"No!" she says truthfully. She holds his hand and shows him what Ruth said about being a Jacob's-pet, and then remembers how awful she felt closing the game room door on him. "I'm sorry, Jake," she says, near tears.

"Hey, it's okay!" he says, tucking her hair behind her ear. "I won't stop liking you just because you need some time on your own. I'll still be here when you need me, okay, Nessie?"

"You're not...mad?" she asks tremulously.

"Why would I be mad, silly goose? I want you to have fun. And I like hanging out with these bozos." He indicates the other adults. "So don't worry. It's all good. We're cool."

"Yeah, we're cool," Nessie repeats, trying out the colloquialism and feeling daringly informal as she mimics Jake's laid-back tone of voice. Emmett stifles a snort of laughter.

And then, simple as that, the tight, anxious feeling in her chest immediately evaporates. She beams at him. He beams right back.

"I have to go," she says, and races off as quickly as she appeared. "See you later!" She hears Jake and her family laughing over something as she speeds down the hall toward the game room.

"I'm bored," announces Ruth when Nessie reappears. "Wanna go swimming?"

"Okay!" agrees Nessie, and they head out to the Cullen's enormous heated in-ground swimming pool, where they splash and make whirlpools and shriek with insane little-girl-laugher under Esme's watchful but unobtrusive eye. Nessie enjoys herself thoroughly and doesn't think about Jake at all.

Several days later, Ruth's mom drops her off for a playdate while Jake and Nessie are playing Who-can-Throw-Whom-the-Farthest. Jake is spinning and spinning like a hammer thrower. He clutches Nessie's hands in his, and her long light-brown curls fly out behind her as she revolves around Jake's massive form, her body held out straight as an arrow and her toes pointed as she prepares to be thrown. Just as Ruth comes around the corner, Jake lets her fly, and she sails at least eighty yards, maybe more.

Ruth screams as her playmate goes flying into a distant stand of trees, where inertia and friction work together to bring her to a stop. She is still standing there in horror when Nessie trots back, a grin on her face.

"You only beat me by a _tiny little bit_, Jake!" she says happily, and then notices Ruth. "Hi Ruth," she says.

"Well," says Jake with an exaggerated yawn and stretch, "I guess I'll let you guys do your thing. Hi and bye, Ruth. See ya, Nessie." He saunters away toward the boundary line, where Nessie knows (though Ruth does not) he will tie his clothing to his leg and then sprint home as a wolf.

Nessie stands still for a few moments, torn between wanting to give Jake a proper goodbye hug and not wanting to look like a dumb baby in front of Ruth. But as Jake is about to go out of sight, her priorities realign themselves with a jerk. She runs after him and wraps her arms around his waist, the highest part of him she can reach without jumping. Jake reaches down and picks her up for a proper hug, enfolding her easily in his gigantic embrace. Her skin gleams as patches of cool white through the warm brown of his arms. She rests her head against his shoulder for a brief second before wriggling out of his arms and racing back.

Ruth is staring at her when she returns. Nessie holds her head defiantly and is about to defend her actions—dumb and babyish though they might have been—when Ruth speaks.

"Wow," she says reverently. "Jacob Black is _so cool_."

Nessie blinks in surprise. Where is the judgment she was expecting? Whence the change of heart?

"Yeah," she agrees, nodding. She is so pleased that Ruth has finally caught on to this one immutable fact. "He's mine," she adds proudly.


	4. Second Christmas

**Hello, dears. Here in the US of A, and particularly in my rather volatile state of residence, we are having a tense and active Election Day. To take my mind off things, here is a new chapter! I hope you'll all find it within your hearts to leave me a little review to ease my government-related anxiety.  
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**If you are an American citizen of voting age, don't you dare read this chapter until you've hit up your polling place. If you are NOT an American of voting age, enjoy! (Incidentally, I am rather curious to know how many non-American readers I have. I get a few reviews in Spanish from time to time, which I utterly treasure [Hola, amigas!], but other than that it's hard to tell. Feel free to come out of the woodwork, y'all! And if you review as a Guest, although I can't actually respond to your reviews I always recite a dirty limerick in your honor)  
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The Christmas of Nessie's second year is spent at Grandpa Charlie's house, but it hardly looks like Grandpa Charlie's house once Alice and Esme are done with it. Nessie's mom always jokes that Alice is the only one in the family who's allowed to have an opinion on parties, and she's sort of right about that: Alice so adores planning parties that the others let her have her way in every detail. It makes them happy to see her happy.

But Esme is actually the more accomplished artist and craftswoman of the two, so Alice frequently commandeers her to help with the handwork. The two can be seen conspiring for weeks leading up to December 25th. As of Christmas morning, Grandpa Charlie's living room has seen the following changes:

1. The fireplace has been cleaned, brick by brick, until it glows a warm red that Nessie never even suspected under all that soot. Emmett and Rosalie have trekked far and wide to find the most fragrant fallen trees in forests as distant as northern British Columbia, which they've hauled back and chopped into logs. The roaring fire imparts a wonderful smell to the house, which blends tantalisingly with the seven thousand assorted cookies Nessie's mom has baked in the kitchen (most of them go to local women's shelters, although the werewolves claim their share).

2. With Charlie's amused permission, the walls have been repainted a comforting pine-green. Over this Esme has created a rich filigree of bare, wintry trees, all exquisitely executed, right down to the very last twig. Nessie assumes the trees are painted, but when she gets close and touches and smells them, she suspects they may be actual silver leaf. Alice assures Charlie they will paint over it again when Christmas is done, return his house to its usual bachelor state. But once or twice Nessie catches her grandpa gazing thoughtfully at the walls in a way that makes her think he'll let it stay as it is.

3. Esme has taken several antique Oriental rugs and softly woven merino blankets out of storage and covered every cold wooden surface in the house. The rugs are primarily green in color, and look and feel just like moss underfoot. Everything is cozy and welcoming.

4. Alice and Jasper have found not one but four lush, narrow cypress trees which stand like sentinels in the four corners of the room. Each one is decorated according to a different theme. Nessie's favorite is covered with ornaments depicting wildlife native to the Olympic Peninsula. In addition to birds and deer and squirrels, Esme has carved sixteen little wooden wolves, each a perfect likeness of one of the wolves in Jake's and Sam's packs. Jake's is the only one that looks a little amorphous and lopsided, because Nessie insisted on doing that one herself.

5. Hanging from the ceiling in variegated heights are thousands of snowy white down feathers, each one individually fastened to the ceiling by a blue silk thread. She can't imagine having the patience to assemble such a fiddly installation, but then again, inhuman patience is sort of Esme's specialty. Esme's hours of tying and hanging are worth it for the snowlike splendor the gently swaying feathers lend to the room.

6. Nessie's father has made several high-quality vinyl records of everyone's favorite Christmas songs—from the Gregorian chants and Latin _Kyrie'_s that Carlisle favors to the mellow oldies Charlie grew up with. His old Victrola is silenced only at bedtime.

7. Esme has a stockpile of elegant beeswax candles she made a few years ago when she went through a candle-making phase, and they adorn every flat surface. To these Alice adds antique lanterns with pretty designs cut in their sides, from which shoot glittering points of yellow light.

When all is said and done, Charlie's house is a perfectly contained realm of enchantment, a microcosm of Dreamland. Nessie and her parents join Charlie, the Blacks and the Clearwaters for Christmas-Eve-Eve dinner, and even Leah looks impressed.

Nessie can hardly believe that Christmas morning will be able to top the weeks leading up to it, but she's wrong. She was only a baby for her first Christmas; but now she is two (and looks and thinks like a nine-year-old). She is old enough to get _really good_ presents and, even better, she is old enough to _give _really good presents.

For instance, knowing how uncomfortable her mother is with tangible gifts, Nessie and her father make up a ballad about a girl who languishes in a high tower, dreaming of escape. The girl begins to fade away, until she realizes she must either risk all for freedom or die alone, unloved and unsatisfied. In the end, she leaps from the window, and in the few seconds approaching terminal velocity, before she is dashed fatally against the rocks at the base of the tower, she is more exhilarated and fulfilled than she was in all her years imprisoned. It is an oddly mournful tune to come from the lips of so young a child, but she has long wished to try her hand at duplicating the heartsore lays of Appalachia, as well as their British prototypes. It is not a happy song, but Nessie's mother is not inherently a cheerful person, and though she looks as near tears as a vampire can get, Nessie knows by the way her mother hugs her that the gift was a good one.

To Jake, Nessie gives a book she wrote herself, and it is full of adventures and mysteries and gruesome deaths for her enemies. She also tries to illustrate it, although she has next to no artistic skill. What she lacks in perspective and anatomy, however, she makes up in copious quantities of cadmium blood. Jake is thrilled with his gift and goes around showing it to everyone, laughing over the pictures and the ludicrously violent storylines with Charlie and Emmett and Rosalie.

Jake informs the family that his gift for Nessie must be presented away from the vampires. Nessie's mom looks immediately suspicious and begins to balk, but her dad looks first surprised and then amused.

"Oh, let them go," he says, laughing at his wife's expression. "It'll be worth it, I promise. I can't wait to hear what she thinks of _that_..." But her refuses to tell her what Jake is giving to Nessie, saying only that she'll find out soon enough.

So Charlie, Billy, Jake and Nessie all tramp out to the garage, where there is a space heater set up next to something cube-shaped and covered with a sheet. On top of the sheet is a red plastic Christmas bow, and attached to the bow is a tag that reads, _For Nessie_.

"Well?" says Jake, hopping from foot to foot with excitement. "Go ahead!"

Hesitantly Nessie steps forward. She can hear a small rustling, and the tiny buzz of a heartbeat. She puts out her hand and pulls away the sheet, revealing...a _rat?_

The rat blinks up at Nessie. Nessie blinks down at the rat. There is a silence in the garage, the sort of silence that is full of non-sounds like suppressed laughter and _will she like it? Will she like it?_

Then, with a squeal that can be heard halfway to the highway, Nessie crouches down to peer into the cage. The rat is young, practically still a baby, and it is _so adorable_ and it has these big black eyes and these clever little paws and _oh my god look at its wee tiny whiskers! _The rat looks understandably wary of the shrieking nine-year-old that is bouncing around its home, but when she unlatches the door to the cage, her hand is steady and gentle and reassuringly slow. The rat inches forward to smell her proffered finger, then to delicately accept the crumb of monkey bread Nessie was still nibbling on a minute ago.

"Do...do you like it?" Jake asks hopefully.

Nessie shushes him and announces in a whisper, "His name is Bombadil. Don't scare him!"

A few minutes later, Charlie and Billy have returned to the house to start mulling some cider (and, Nessie knows, spiking their own mugs with moderate amounts of rum). Bombadil has been coaxed onto Nessie's hand and ever-so-smoothly lifted to her breast, where he huddles against her warmth.

"Where did you get him?" Nessie asks Jake. "A pet store?"

"Nah," says Jake. "I found a big fat one rooting around in my trash a month or so ago, and I figured if she was clever enough to get into a free-standing three-foot-tall metal trashcan, she was clever enough not to kill. So I popped her in a cage and fed her stuff from dinner, and it turns out she was just fat because she was knocked up. So she had a whole bunch of babies, and this one was definitely the smartest and the coolest, and so I saved him for you. He just stopped drinking milk a couple days ago. I was worried he wouldn't be ready for you to meet him yet, but I guess he likes you." Bombadil is rooting around Nessie's sweater, trying to find a way in. She curls her arm around herself to make a little sort of nest for him.

"What happened to the other rats?" Nessie asks anxiously.

"Most of the other ones weren't really very social and they didn't like the cage, so I let them go."

"Where?" Nessie demands. She does _so _love animals.

"A meadow in the woods," Jake says, laughing at Nessie's earnestness. "Don't worry, Nesslie, I did do _some _research." Nessie smiles at the nickname; he only calls her _Nesslie _when he is trying to comfort her. "Honestly, they were terrified of me. And the mom rat never really warmed up to me either, I scored some pretty gnarly bites off her. I don't think they were cut out to be pets. I let them go before they got used to humans, so they'll have a better chance of surviving in the wild. But Bombadil does have one brother who let me handle him. I gave that one to Claire."

"What'd she call him?" Nessie asks suspiciously.

"She named him Whiskers," Jake says. "Because he has whiskers."

She replaces the tiny ball of fur in his cage where, relieved to be back in familiar surroundings, he burrows into a heap of wood shavings. Nessie looks down fondly at her new little pet, now half-obscured though visible enough to her sharp eyes. She appreciates his soft, light-gray fur and his delicate long teeth and his two keen black eyes, which are darting not fearfully but curiously from his hiding place. Jake must have put in a lot of hours to accustom Bombadil to human hands, she realizes. Rats are smarter than guinea pigs and hamsters; you have to earn their love.

"Whiskers, huh?" says Nessie. "I like Bombadil better."

Jake informs Nessie that the rat will freak out if it smells a vampire, so it will have to live with him, even though it will still be Nessie's rat. After she has played with Bombadil for half an hour, Nessie reluctantly covers the cage back up and accompanies Jake into the house. She is getting hungry, and her mom and Alice have been laying out a wicked spread for lunch, all full of roasted lamb and potatoes and about a thousand kinds of cheeses. Nessie has a passion for cheese, and resolves to bring one of every kind out to Bombadil after lunch.

"Well, sweetie?" her mother prompts when Nessie joins her in the kitchen to steal a leg of lamb.

"Jake got me a rat!" Nessie says happily.

"A...a rat_?_" her mother repeats doubtfully.

"Uh huh," nods Nessie. "He's so cute and his name is Bombadil and he has a little cage but I think he's going to need a bigger one soon because rats grow fast you know and Jake made him a little house out of plywood but I think he should have a real house to live in and he can't come to our house because you're all vampires!"

"Did you say _rat_, dearest?" her mother says again.

Nessie rolls her eyes. "_Yes_, Mom. Jeez. A rat! His name's Bombadil. Don't call him anything else. And you better not go near him because you'll scare him because you smell like a vampire. And he'll have to live with Jake, so I'm gonna have to go to the rez every single day now for _at least_ an hour, even on school days. I have _responsibilities_ now." Nessie places a surprisingly prim emphasis on the word; when she talks like this she is the spitting image of her father, right down to the intonation of her voice and the prissy tilt of her jaw. If the situation weren't so..._questionable_, her mother would probably laugh.

"Is that so?" her mom says, alternating concerned looks at her daughter and furious looks at Jake, who is laughing unrepentantly in the doorway.

"Don't worry, Bella, I got him checked out by a vet. He has all his shots and everything! Just because his mother was a trash rat doesn't mean—"

"A _trash rat?_" Bella shouts. "You didn't even get him from a store? Ugh, Jake!" She turns back to her daughter and this time her voice is layered with the sort of guilt-pressure that only Bella Swan Cullen can pull off. "Rats get old so fast, and they don't live very long, love. Are you sure you wouldn't like, I don't know, maybe a puppy or a kitten or something?"

Nessie stares at her mother with the kind of stunned disbelief only an offended nine-year-old can pull off. "Rats are extremely intelligent and affectionate animals, _Mother_," she says coldly. "You wouldn't get rid of me just because _I_ grow fast, would you?" Her mother's mouth snaps shut on her lower lip. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go see what Aunt Rosie's doing." Nessie stalks away with dignity, though the effect is rather spoiled when she turns back after a few paces to grab a fistful of nutty Gruyère. Then she proceeds out of the kitchen, head held high, cheeks puffed out with cheese, muttering audibly, "A _phupphy_. Honest'wy."

Her mother is left holding the carving knife and looking bewildered, while Jake laughs helplessly in the corner.


	5. Alpine Fortress

After Christmas, the Cullens take Nessie skiing. This is simultaneously the best, worst, scariest and funnest thing she's ever done. It's awesome and fun because her aunts and uncles can finally let their hair down, now that they're away from Forks; on the slopes they are so covered up that the sun doesn't make their sparkly condition obvious, and they spend the rest of their time indoors. It's scary because they go all the way to the Swiss Alps to ski, and Nessie's never been so far from home before. And it is sad because Jake doesn't go with them, for a variety of reasons that seem rather paltry to Nessie but are apparently important to everyone else.

She is almost paralyzed with shyness every time a stranger talks to her, and strangers are always talking to her, from hotel owners to young couples in cafés to dour old men in plaid wool on street corners. Everyone, from the chirpiest baristas to the most scowly octogenarians, says the same thing: _Oh, what a _beautiful _child!_ They all say it in their own languages, of course, but Jasper obligingly translates for her until she becomes so flustered at all the attention that he stops.

When they get on the slopes for the first time, her father demonstrates how to hold herself on the skis, how to steer, how to stop. She watches him take off down the hill, followed by an assertively-slaloming Emmett. When it is her turn, she falls on her face almost immediately, unused to this specific style of forward momentum. Then she tries again, and makes it several yards before she tumbles. But Nessie is not deterred; she loves trying new things, and she is determined to master skiing before they leave. She is an exceptionally coordinated child, and by the end of the second day she has graduated to the red trails. On the third day, the sun hides behind clouds and so her aunts and uncles take the opportunity to visit a nearby village and maybe indulge Nessie in a little hot chocolate.

On the way back, Jasper and Emmett notice a hidden ravine with a great deal of very pure white snow collected in the bottom. They want to go explore, knowing that only a vampire could get down there safely and they will be hidden from prying eyes. So the five of them jump, trek and slide down there to find themselves in a wonderland of undisturbed beauty. There are scraggly trees growing out from the rocks, every needle on their branches dusted with frost. The snow on the ground is easily six feet deep, twice that in some areas. Emmett picks up a wad of snow in his hand and flings it at Jasper's head, and soon the air is thick with snowballs. Then Jasper begins kicking and scooping the snow into walkways and walls.

Alice gets that concentrating-on-a-vision look, then delightedly claps her hands and shrieks, "Oh my god you guys, we are about to make such a great snow fort! Come on, everybody help!"

By the time the sun has sunk past the edges of the ravine, they have the blueprint of a veritable snow-Versailles laid out, with grand halls and chambers and ante-chambers and even a sizeable ditch that Nessie insists on digging, with a vague notion in her mind of a treasure-chamber. They return to the hotel where Nessie's parents and grandparents are waiting for them. Carlisle and Esme listen to their account with obvious pleasure, but Nessie gets a very stern talking-to from her father, who is angry they were an hour later than expected.

"Aw, don't be such a sourpuss, Ed," says Jasper. "She was with us the whole time, and we weren't _that_ late."

"Well, I don't want you going back out unless I'm with you," Edward responds firmly. Nessie's heart sinks; she loves her father, but he is about as fun as getting toothpaste for Halloween.

"Oh, come on, Edward," wheedles Alice. "I'll make sure I watch the future every minute. We'll stay completely out of sight of humans. And anyway," she goes on in an inspired burst, "We want to surprise you with it! You can't come and see it until it's done. Besides, wouldn't you and Bella like some _alone time?_" He glares at her, and Nessie knows he is reading her mind, but Alice's thoughts must match her innocent expression because at last he sighs and nods. Nessie's mom drapes herself over him and whispers something in his ear, too high and fast for the rest to understand, but Nessie finds herself shunted off to bed awfully quick after that, and her parents don't even show up to wave them off the next morning.

Their snowy palace really takes shape after that: first everyone gets the basic structures in place, and then Alice disappears for half a day and comes back laden with glorious white and blue furs, blankets and rugs she picked up somewhere in town. Jasper and Nessie begin refining the walls and floors, using a leveling tool and a ruler to shear everything smooth. Emmett and Rosalie begin work on an army of snow-men, not the cumbersome three-sphere kind but actual sculptures of men and women in a variety of poses. Then Rosalie takes Nessie out to find objects to decorate their town, and they come back loaded down with pine cones and pretty twigs and rocks and even a rodent skeleton they found in a tree. These things are quickly arranged as plates and bowls and smoking pipes and swords. In a fit of inspiration, Nessie even carves out a prison, with frozen twigs for bars, and arranges the skeleton inside it in the most gruesome pose she can contrive.

All told, the four vampires spend about fifteen days working on their little fortress, sun or shine, snowy or clear. It more closely resembles a villa now than a snow fort, with multi-story buildings made of firmly-packed snow blocks which they have hardened by spraying with water and allowing to freeze.

On day seven, Nessie is standing at the top of the Watchtower, an ice platform they've built into the craggy side of the ravine, from which all may be surveyed. She gazes down on her aunts and uncles. She watches Emmett plant a kiss on Rosalie's lips, only to get a hunk of snow dropped down his t-shirt by his gleefully cackling wife. She watches as Jasper carefully inspects the arsenal of pointed sticks, ice-filled snowballs, and trebuchets that he made himself. He is preparing to test one of the catapults. As he pokes and prods it he keeps up a running commentary on the history of the trebuchet to Alice, who is trying and failing to appear interested.

None of her family are wearing winter clothes, although the air is well below freezing. Alice is wearing a sun dress and strappy sandals. They are sparkling beautifully in the sunlight, sparkling almost as brightly as the snow.

On their third-to-last day in Switzerland, they deem their fortress complete. Nessie proudly invites her parents and grandparents to come see what they've been working on all this time. The family all trek out to the secret ravine. The aunts and uncles let the others go first, and there are audible gasps of delight when the round a corner and catch their first sight of the fortress. It has crenellated battlements, both a prison _and_ a torture chamber filled to overflowing with animal bones, a grand reception hall. There's even a moat Jasper devised by liquefying large quantities of snow in a pot over an open fire, pouring into a ditch Rosalie dug around the fortress, and allowing it to harden back into ice which is smooth enough to skate on. The moat alone took Jasper the better part of a week. Nessie has never seen her uncle so excited about anything as he was about that moat.

Nessie spends the whole day racing her parents around the moat, strutting about on the Watchtower, enacting epic icy battles with the others, and taking it in turns to be a tyrannical Empress and a captured spy from the neighboring Fortress of Snowy Doom. Her parents don't have a drop of imagination between them, but what they lack Esme, Rosalie and Jasper more than make up. Nessie plays until she is ready to fall over, and her father carries her back to the hotel in the dark.

While she is gliding smoothly along in her father's arms, she has a dream about Jake, and it is a little disturbing. She dreams that Jake is _here_, in Switzerland, that he wants to play with them and help on the fort, but there is something in Nessie that rejects this idea. This fort belongs to her and her aunts and uncles. She loves Jake, but in her dream she pushes him away with both hands, pushes him all the way back to Forks.

She wakes in a cold sweat and sees that it is past midnight. Her thoughts are jumbled and a little guilty, but she can't figure out why. Her dream felt terribly real, but that isn't what disturbs her; what disturbs her is the realization that if Jake really _did_ show up in Switzerland, she would be disappointed. There is a peculiar abandon that has taken over her aunts and uncles as they frolic in the snow, in this foreign country; and it has possessed Nessie too. She realizes that it's been a week and a half since she's even thought of Jake, and that once she started working on the snow fort she didn't miss him at all.

This is what gives her pangs of guilt. But she can't help but feel a simultaneous thrill at being so far away from the security that Jake represents. And after all, she will show him everything they are doing here, just as soon as she gets back. Until then, there is a brilliant new liberated feeling that she can't help but enjoy, a little spark of something that makes her life feel more exciting than it ever has before.

When she and her family touch down at SeaTac, Jake is there waiting, and Nessie runs straight to him for a hug before she has even put down her little vintage Samsonite train case. It feels good to nestle into his arms; it feels like coming home. But as she sinks into his arms, Nessie regretfully watches that spark grow smaller and smaller. Before it disappears entirely, she breaks out if their hug and hustles off after Jasper and Alice to wait at the baggage claim.

Jake starts to follow after her, but over her shoulder she shouts, "Emmett, tell Jake about Alpine Fortress!" Jake is detained by Emmett's extremely colorful description of their evil snowy empire.

Nessie is not an overly introspective child, and so she doesn't know how to categorize her new feelings regarding Jake. All she knows is that she grew used to the exhilarating freedom of being away from him. While she is happy to see him again, she finds herself for the first time inexplicably annoyed by the way he hovers.

So even though she can feel his eyes on her as she skips off after Alice and Jasper, Nessie doesn't turn to look back.

* * *

**Aww, Wittle Nessie is gwowing up! What do you think, dear readers? Does this new chapter give you hope?**


	6. Beginning School

**Hola lovers! I don't usually do this but I have a substantial Author's Note to insert here to clarify some things. There may be some frustration for my readers in this and other stories when I separate Jake and Nessie. It may feel contrived to some (to quote a very...um, _pointed_ series of reviews I recently got), but to my view it is **_**absolutely **_**necessary. Nessie cannot grow up and become romantically attracted to Jake without undergoing a period of physical and emotional separation first—the longer, the better, because the more she can grow as an independent person, the better their chances of making it as a couple. Sometimes, this will even involve both of them dating/loving other people before they end up together, so that when they **_**do**_ **finally commit romantically, it is more meaningful than just giving in to the imprint; it becomes a conscious choice. I'm sorry if you disagree, but this is non-negotiable to me. To understand why I feel this way, try reading up on the Westermarck Effect and on child grooming. **

**Hell, even spending the first three years of Nessie's life together should turn Jake and Nessie platonic for life. (I'm not making that up. It is a recognized social/biological phenomenon that has been extensively studied by real live scientists and everything) I am willing to bend the rules of human biology a little for my own purposes—I **_**want **_**them to end up together, and stupid Smeyer didn't give us too much leeway on the subject of Nessie's early life and her involvement with Jake. However, for me to feel comfortable resolving their relationship as a romance, it is necessary that Nessie not only spend a fair amount of her adolescence at a physical distance from Jake, but that she also grow emotionally separate from him so that she can return to him on her own terms. This will be frustrating (and contrived) to some of you; I can certainly understand that. Many of you probably want to read something much simpler, where there is a more seamless segue from friend to lover. You're not going to get that here, because I don't believe it is realistically possible. For those who feel strongly about that, perhaps it would be best if you look elsewhere for your Jake/Nessie fanfiction; I promise I won't be offended.**

**However, if you want to follow the story of a young girl who learns to cut the apron strings, and in so doing finds a yet deeper connection to her hulking wolf-man bestie, read on!**

* * *

By the time Jake deems Nessie old enough to learn how to drive, she is almost three, and she has grown as tall as Jake's ribcage. She's been bugging him about driving lessons for a long time. She has to go with her parents to a high school in British Columbia, and she worries that if he doesn't teach her this summer they won't have a chance, because high school will take up all her time and college will take up all his.

So he hops in the passenger seat of his own car and begins to tell her how to manipulate the clutch and the brakes and the gears, and after a few very shaky false-starts, she can get it into first pretty smoothly. Nessie is proud of herself, and Jake is proud of her, although she can tell by the way he's holding the edge of his seat that he is also nervous for his car. But she learns quickly, and before long she is cruising around with him on the rez, with all the windows down so the wind can play with their hair. That is how they spend the whole summer before she starts high school.

Nessie is nervous about going to a real school for the first time. She grew too fast to go to school before. She was taught Math and Science by Rosalie, and English and Literature by her father, and World History by Carlisle, who has really good stories about the Napoleonic Wars and the Inquisition and the invention of modern medicine. Jasper supplemented Carlisle's lessons with American History and some Physics, and Esme taught her arts and crafts, like how to paint with watercolors and oils, and how to draw a straight line without a ruler, and how to work with wood. Emmett taught her Italian and Spanish, and Alice taught her how to shop. But her growth is so slow now that she will be able to pass for human in public, and it is time for her to start learning how to live with humans. That is the one thing her family can't teach her.

One day, a few weeks before school is to start, Nessie notices a couple of fine dark hairs growing in her armpits and over her crotch. With all the things she's been taught in her short life, no one has ever told her much about human biology, and she is seriously freaked out, convinced that she will soon be covered with hair like a dog. She is too embarrassed and horrified to tell anyone but Rosalie, who laughs and explains about puberty, and takes her to a store to buy all the things an adolescent girl needs.

Soon Nessie knows that everyone knows about this, from the sly way her mother looks at her, but she is far too embarrassed to tell Jake. She doesn't even get a chance to, because after she and Rosalie go out to buy her pads and lotions and training bras, her dad somehow prevents her from spending time alone with Jacob anymore. He does it deftly and subtly, always having some good excuse, but Nessie is like a plant yearning toward the sun, and it annoys her to have her father always getting in the way.

But when they move to British Columbia, and enroll in a high school, Nessie sees less and less of Jake. He is trying to do too many things: lead his pack against the transient red-eyed vampires who still happen through, take college classes, flip cars for money to pay for school, and still see her every night. It just isn't possible. And, truth be told, Nessie herself has so many things on her plate that she can hardly think how she would fit him in more often. She is taking all advanced-placement classes, and her parents have her in piano lessons, flute lessons and ballet four times a week.

But even all these activities are nothing compared to the enormous stress of making friends in a strange town. Lunchtime at school is an unprecedented trial for her, because she feels terribly conspicuous sitting with her family while everyone else in the cafeteria separates into various social castes. Nessie is an introverted girl by nature, and she has inherited her mother's consuming diffidence. As a result, although she has been surrounded since birth by people who openly adore her, she still feels shy around strangers. She reflects that she is lucky to be pretty, wealthy and athletic, because that level of privilege opens doors to her that would otherwise remain shut. But even so, it takes her almost two weeks to drum up the courage to initiate a conversation with a classmate.

The classmate's name is Will, and Nessie is brave enough to talk to him because he is the first person to smile at her. He is about two inches shorter than her, with a brilliantly-freckled face and little wire-rimmed glasses and sandy-brown hair. He is dressed unfashionably and his teeth are yellow under his braces, but his smile is wide and very genuine. If he were handsome, well-dressed and suave, Nessie would never be brave enough to talk to him. But he is sort of a goofy kid, and so Nessie says shyly,

"Hi. I'm Nessie."

"I know that," says Will. "I'm Will. You're in my History class, too."

Of course Nessie is well aware of this fact. She casts around desperately for a subject to talk about. "Do you...do you like Biology?" she says very awkwardly.

Will laughs at this, like it's a joke. "Sure," he says. "It's okay, I guess. I like video games better though."

This elicits a tentative smile from Nessie. With video games she is on more solid ground. "What do you play?" she asks.

"Oh, mostly World of Warcraft. And Diablo. And I play Civ III."

"Do you...do you ever play Zelda?" Nessie asks hopefully.

"Yeah, I love Zelda!" he says enthusiastically. "I only have the N64 ones though. I want to play Twilight Princess some time but I can't afford it yet."

"Oh," says Nessie daringly, "I have it! Maybe...maybe you could come play it at my house some time." At this point, the Biology teacher comes in, and their conversation is cut short. But later, Will approaches Nessie as she is waiting in line to get a Snapple from the vending machine.

"Want to sit with me and my friends?" he asks, gesturing at a small round table in the corner. Nessie looks over. The table is kitty-corner from the Cullen table, where Rosalie and Emmett are already pretending to eat their trays of chicken nuggets and wilted lettuce. It is as far from her safety zone as she can possibly get in this intimidatingly loud and crowded cafeteria.

"You can tell me about Twilight Princess," Will adds, effectively making up Nessie's mind for her. She swings by her family's table to tell them she's going to sit elsewhere today, and then spends the rest of her lunch period talking to Will and his geeky, goofy friends. From that day, the cafeteria ceases to be a cause of terror for Nessie, and she begins to think of Will's friends as _her_ friends. She is one of only two girls in the group, but in fact Nessie finds the male rough-housing comfortingly familiar.

* * *

One day, she falls asleep in homeroom. She hasn't been sleeping well, with all the activities she's had crammed into her schedule, and it is catching up to her. As she does so often, she dreams of Jake: first that he is speeding from class to see her, and he is running so fast that his Rabbit bursts into flames. Then she dreams that he is speeding through fixing an old beater, and he gets something mixed up in his hurry and the beater bursts into flames. Then she dreams that he is speeding through the forest after a bad, red-eyed vampire, and she knows what's going to happen next so she wakes herself up to find the whole class staring at her. Edward is in her home room—she must call him Edward now, and that feels kind of weird—and he is sitting tensely at his desk, not looking at her, but she knows he was watching her dream.

"You were talking in your sleep," he says in a buzz, so fast the other students can't hear.

"What did I say?" she asks him in the same way.

"'Jake'," he answers, and he looks dreadfully upset. The other students giggle a little and then resume their whispers and note-passing.

She knows that if she asked him to, Jake would sacrifice college to spend more time with her. She doesn't want that, so she tells him that she likes having the time apart, and that seeing him once a week is still plenty. He only looks hurt for a second before understanding covers his face, and he gives her an extra big hug and tells her that even if they only see each other sometimes, she will always be his favorite person.

After a while, Nessie doesn't even think anything of it. Seeing Jake only once a week becomes the new normal, and while there is always that insistent tug between her heart and his, she feels wonderfully liberated up here in Canada. This far from Jake, she feels as free as a skydiver, spinning like a windblown leaf above the clouds.

* * *

**To satisfy my own curiosity, on which side of the line do you fall, readers? Do you prefer stories in which Jake/Nessie are the only ones for each other and they progress fluidly from friends/mentor/protege to lovers? Or do you prefer stories in which they both achieve some independence from each other before they finally get it on? You already know how I come down on this issue; feel free to argue with me about it in a review :)  
**


	7. Two Conversations

High school teaches Renesmee a lot about life, even if it can't teach her much about history or English or math. She is thrilled to be included in Will's group of dweeby, kind-hearted friends. There is Kevin, the constantly-joking, impossibly skinny tall one with horn-rimmed glasses and pink-palmed hands that don't seem to match the rest of his skin, which is the color of coffee. There is Justin, the portly one with bad skin and worse breath and the best collection of comics Nessie has ever seen. Richard is the bad boy of the group, which isn't saying much considering the group: his bad-boy status is mostly dependent on the fact that sometimes he will steal his grandpa's car for a few hours' joyride, but since the farthest he ever goes is to the record store at the mall, and he always drives the speed limit, Nessie doesn't really see the harm. And there is Lizzie. Small, golden-skinned, with dark almond-shaped eyes and a ready smile. In fact, all of Nessie's new friends smile easily. It's why she likes them so much.

Having classes with her father drives Nessie crazy, because she can't even daydream with him around, she has to pay absolute attention to the teacher. She can't believe he met her mom in high school. She can't believe he was flirty and cool as little as five years ago, whispering in the back of Bio lab with Bella Swan, daughter of Police Chief Charlie Swan. He is an unbearable drag right now, always breathing down her neck, clearing his throat prissily when her mind wanders from whatever boring lesson they are supposed to be learning about compound nouns and Greek roots and irregular verbs. At least Composition is the only class she has with him.

Health class is much better, because Alice is in that class with her. All of the Cullens are enrolled, but only tiny Alice really looks like a freshman (although Edward and Bella do their weather best). Alice has it down to an art.

"You see," she tells Nessie one day in the girls' locker room, "The physical stuff is one thing. It helps that I'm so scrawny. But to really sell _teenage girl_, you can't act like you know everything. You have to make some really dumb jokes and say embarrassing things at the wrong times. You have to act like you're always really obsessed with what people think of you."

"Is that what I do?" Nessie asks, horrified.

"Well, a little," Alice admits. "Don't worry, you don't embarrass yourself, you just come off shy, you know? That's exactly what I'm talking about. Rosie can pull off junior or senior, because she is terminally self-assured. Ditto for Emmett. That stuff works for upperclassmen. But for us ickle freshman..."

"You have to act like an immature idiot," Nessie grumbles, hiding her head in her oversized gym t-shirt.

"Don't take it the wrong way, sweetie," Alice says, tying her designer sneakers into an unnecessarily elaborate bow. "It's a good thing that you act the way you do. It's normal to be uncertain sometimes."

Nessie pops her head through the neck-hole of her shirt and grimaces at her aunt. "Well, I'm glad you approve. Thanks a lot."

"Oh, don't be mad!" Alice says, swooping forward to enfold her niece in a hug and looking up several inches into her eyes. "I love you just the way you are!"

Nessie rolls her eyes, but she isn't really angry. By the time she and her aunt are out on the track field, running laps with the rest of their class under the watchful eye of their overweight gym teacher, she has forgotten all about it.

That night, however, she stews over their conversation. She isn't sure what it is that bothers her about it, but she feels unsettled and anxious. She tries to sleep for a while, but she can't get comfy. Finally, at half past one in the morning, she pulls out her cell phone and calls Jake.

"Hey, Ness," he says groggily. Nessie feels instantly guilty that she woke him for something so stupid as her own teenage insecurity.

"Hey, Jake," she whispers, aware that no one in the house is actually asleep and that they all have stellar hearing. "I woke you up, I'm sorry."

"It's okay," he says automatically. "I was having a dumb dream anyway. What's on your mind, Nesslie?"

Nessie doesn't really know how to order her thoughts, but she knows Jake will never judge her, so she comes right out with it. "Jake, do you think I'm immature?"

There is a silence for a while. Then, "In some ways, yes. In other ways, no."

"Thats a safe answer," she says, frowning into the darkness. "What ways? What do I do that's immature?" Nessie twists one curl around and around her left forefinger.

"Maybe 'immature' is the wrong word," Jake amends. "It's clear that you're young, but you're much smarter than anyone else your age—I mean your apparent age."

Nessie already knows she's smart; people tell her that all the time, and anyway it's not what she's interested in at the moment. "But how is it so obvious I'm young?" she demands. "What do I do that's so childish?" She needs to learn what it is so she can fix it. She lives with a bunch of ancient immortals and until now has never questioned her place among them, but suddenly she is worried that she fits in with her family as poorly as she fits in with humans.

"Well," Jake says, and she can tell by the way his tone has changed that he knows he is wandering into dangerous waters. "Okay, you know I love you, right, Ness?"

"Duh," she says. "Now tell me."

"Well," he says again, "Sometimes you...sort of stare at people. Especially people you don't know that well."

"I do?"

"Yeah. That's something most people have learned not to do by the time they're a teenager. But you're not a teenager, technically, and even though you've been taught a lot of things, no one ever taught you about staring. I mean, who would have taught you that? Your family doesn't need to blink, it wouldn't have occurred to them. And I...well, I..."

"Didn't want to hurt my feelings," Nessie finishes for him. "Well, what else?"

"Ness, are you sure you want to talk about this now? It's really late..."

"Yes," Nessie says firmly. It's not fair of her to make him stay on the phone with her when he must be exhausted, but she feels so frazzled that she wants to keep hearing his voice.

"Well, you're really sensitive."

"I don't care, I can take it!" Nessie insists. "You can tell me."

"No," says Jake, "I mean, that's another thing about you. You're really sensitive. You're thin-skinned. People usually learn to roll with the punches as they get older, learn to let things roll off their backs. Not you, though. Everything affects you. I don't know if that's because you're young or if it's because you're your mother's daughter or if its just because you're _you_."

"I see," says Nessie in a small voice. "I didn't realize I was so...so..." Her voice wavers. "Pathetic," she whispers.

"Aw, Ness," Jake says, "Please don't be upset. These aren't character flaws. They're just...just a part of who you are right now. Some things about you will change as you get older, and some won't. But seriously, everyone has to go through this bullshit, you know? Figuring out who they are and how to deal with life. I mean, you're only three. Cut yourself some slack!"

"Yeah," says Nessie. "Sure."

"Man, I wish I hadn't said anything," Jake grumbles. "It's just 'cause I'm tired and I wasn't thinking..."

"Well," she says, "I asked you, didn't I? All you did was answer my question. And anyway, I _am_only three, it's true. But I'm also not. I mean, I don't know what age I feel, but I guess I feel older than three. Does that make sense?"

Jake clutches at this incoherent thread. "Yeah," he says emphatically. "Exactly."

"So stop telling me I'm only three, okay Jake?" She tries to keep the petulant whine out of her voice, tries to sound grown-up and assertive.

"Sure, Ness, whatever you want."

"You don't get it," she says. "I need you to understand that I'm not three anymore. Maybe I don't have an age. Maybe I'm not even a real person!"

"Ness, I'm sorry, but you are talking out of your ass right now," he says through a yawn. "Of course you're a real person."

"I mean, I know I'm not three. I know how to drive already!" Jake snorts discreetly on the other end. "Well, mostly," she adds. "The point is, if you're going to think I'm really young and immature, I at least want you to think I'm the _right kind _of young and immature. Okay?"

"Okay," he says. "So what age is that, if it's not three?"

"I don't know," she admits. "I can't tell."

"Well, maybe I can help," he offers. "Let's see... Um, do you hate either of your parents yet?"

"What? No!" Nessie exclaims. Then, after a moment, "But my dad is really annoying at school. And my mom is super embarrassing."

"Oh, good," Jake says. "So you're definitely at least thirteen. You know, mentally. Have you, let's see...have you written any morbid poetry in your Trapper Keeper?"

"What's a Trapper Keeper?"

"Sorry, wrong generation. It's a notebook...thingie. My sisters had them."

"Oh. Well, I don't really write a lot of poetry. Except I did some limericks for my Comp class. I don't know if that counts."

"Can you read me one?"

Nessie leans over the bed and rifles in her backpack, pulls out a neatly handwritten page.

"There once was a man from the Valley;  
Around children he never could rally.  
But when faced with a rubber,  
"No, no!" he would blubber.  
Now he has too many to tally."

There is a silence, and then Jake lets out a surprised guffaw. "You wrote that?" he says, sounding pleased.

"Yeah," says Nessie.

"Wow," he says. "Did your dad read it?"

"The whole class read it."

"What did he think?"

"He didn't think it was very funny."

"No," agrees Jake. "He wouldn't."

Nessie smiles in the darkness. She wonders if her father is listening in on her thoughts right now, but she has no way of knowing; her parents' room is two floors below hers.

"Yeah, he wasn't big on birth control, was he?" she says.

"Or humor," Jake adds. "I don't think I've ever heard that guy laugh."

"He laughs sometimes," Nessie says. "He used to laugh at everything I did. But he doesn't so much anymore. I don't think he likes me growing up."

"Well, you're kind of speeding through that part. Besides, fathers are always baffled by their teenage daughters."

"Are you glad I'm growing up?" Nessie asks.

"Sure," says Jake. "I mean, you were a really cool baby, and you were a really funny little kid, and now you're a really awesome, um...whatever you are."

"Young woman?" Nessie volunteers.

"Whoa, whoa," says Jake, laughing. "Let's not get carried away here."

"I'm already taller than my mom."

"Everyone's taller than your mom."

"And I'm learning to drive."

"And doing a damn fine job of it, might I say. Although my Rabbit cringes in fear whenever it sees you coming."

"Jake!"

"Kidding, kidding."

"And I read Slaughterhouse Five for English and I actually sort of understood it. Not, you know, a _lot..._"

"Well, Nessie, I hate to admit it, but I think you might actually kind of sort of be a young...womanish...thing."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she jokes. Her voice turns serious. "Hey...Jake?"

"Yeah?"

"How old do _you _feel?" Nessie is understandably confused about her chronological place in the world, but Jake's got problems of his own. He's only nineteen—not even old enough to drink!—but he has responsibilities above and beyond most nineteen-year-olds'. But he won't age far beyond this age, either: he hit a growth spurt in his teens that projected him into his twenties, where he's likely to stay forever. How does _that_square up?

There is silence on the other end. Then, "I feel my age, mostly. Sometimes I feel older. When I have to boss the other wolves around, I feel this weird extra layer of authority in my brain. It's not me, it's just the alpha thing wearing my skin. I don't feel like I'm naturally a bossy person, you know? But this alpha thing just leaks right under my skin, makes me act all...ugh. I used to give Sam a hard time about it but I'm not doing any better. It's the not the logistical parts of it, either. I mean, scheduling my wolves is a minor headache, but we haven't had a leech in six months so we don't patrol the way we used to. It's just that every time I wolf up and start giving commands I feel different. Sharper. I don't even feel like me."

"That sounds awful," Nessie says sympathetically.

"It is. And it's not like I have a choice about it. If we go long enough without seeing a leech, the other wolves can go back to being normal, but I never can."

"Because of me," she says, more bitterly than she means to. He'll never be fully human again, because he had the ill-fortune to imprint on an inhuman girl.

"Hey, hey," he says, "Trust me, I wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, I think the imprint is about way more than just you and me, or Emily and Sam, or Jared and Kim. I have a theory."

"What's that?" It seems like _everyone_has a theory, but so far they all seem pretty lame to Nessie.

"Well, in the legends, Taha Aki outlived his first two wives. You remember the stories?"

"Yeah, then he imprinted on his third wife."

"Right. After he imprinted on her, he stopped phasing, for obvious reasons."

"Yeah...so?"

"Well, after he died, there were no wolves for a long time, not until Ephraim Black. And they didn't have to stay wolves for very long, because they made the treaty with the Cullens. There wasn't really any actual danger to the tribe, because the Cullens only ate animals."

"Okay. What's your point?"

"Well, when the Cullens moved back a few years ago, they triggered a hell of a lot more phasings than they did before. Partly this was probably because there were more of them by then. I think it was also partly because of your mom."

"What's she got to do with it?"

"Well, the Cullens didn't stay nearly as long the first time, and they interacted with the tribe way less; there wasn't as much of an impact. But this time, because your parents were dating, they stayed and stayed and just...stayed. And I hung out with your mom a lot, and so did the Cullens, and that vampire smell was all over her and it got all over me and I carried it back to the rez, and so after like a year suddenly there were eight new wolves. _Eight_. And it's a good thing, too, because your mom is a magnet for trouble; more and more vampires kept coming to the area, which triggered more and more phasings. None of us had any idea what we were doing. We were in very real danger, us and our whole tribe, and we had no idea how to fight it at all. It would have been really nice if Ephraim had been around then, to show us the ropes, you know? Explain things to Sam, explain things to all of us."

Jacob pauses and takes a deep breath. Nessie can vaguely see where this is going, but she doesn't interrupt.

"Okay," Jake goes on. "So, Sam was alpha because he phased first, but the alpha thing doesn't get into his brain the way it does with me. He was never really _meant_to be alpha, and so he imprinted right away, because hey, what happens when you imprint?"

"You stop phasing," Nessie answers.

"Right. Imprinting gave him a, kind of a statute of limitations on leadership. He'll never want to outlive Emily; he won't even be able to. He's planning on giving up phasing as soon as we're confident that there won't be any more leeches coming through. Same for all the other imprinted wolves, and I would expect that even the ones that don't imprint won't want to outlive their families. Basically, every single wolf is going to stop phasing and resume aging sooner or later. Everyone except..."

"Except you," Nessie says.

"Except me," he echoes. "I may not always have to patrol and stuff like that, but I'll never stop phasing, because I imprinted on an immortal. God willing, I'll still be here in a hundred years, so the next time some band of red-eyed leeches decides to take advantage of the cloud cover over the Olympic Peninsula, and some little Quileute boys who haven't even been born yet start having growth spurts and anger management issues, they'll have someone to look to, someone who knows what to do. We'll never be caught with our pants down again." There is a long pause. "That's my theory, anyway," he adds in the sort of studied, offhand voice that signals he actually thinks about it a lot.

"It sounds reasonable."

"Yeah," he says."And hey, if you'd never been born, maybe I wouldn't have imprinted ever. Or I'd have imprinted on a human, and aged and died. But you _were_born. Maybe the wolf gene is just really opportunistic."

"It makes sense," says Nessie quietly. "It sounds awfully...um, _calculating_."

"Well, I don't even know if I'm right," says Jake quickly. "But anyway, we always knew the imprint is weird and mysterious and annoying."

"Annoying, huh?"

"_You're_not annoying," he says. "But can I be honest?"

"You can always be honest with me," Nessie says.

"I don't know how I would have felt about you if I hadn't imprinted on you. Maybe I would have hated you. But I think not. I mean, everyone adored you as soon as they laid eyes on your tiny fuzzy baby head. Maybe I would have too. Even Leah liked you right away, and Leah is a heartless bitch."

"Jake!"

"Well, she is!" Jake says defensively. "I mean, she's my beta, and she's awesome, and I can't believe I'm admitting this but she's one of my best friends. But that doesn't change the fact that she's brutally cynical."

"Well, maybe," Nessie concedes. "Okay, go on with what you were saying."

"Well, when push came to shove, even if I hadn't imprinted on you, the wolves would have fought alongside the Cullens. We wouldn't have had a choice, with the Volturi coming. We would have needed all the allies we could get, even if we rejected the treaty afterward. And I was angry at your mom, but I never wanted her dead, you know?"

"Sure."

"So, what was the biggest impact of imprinting on you? Not the ceasefire, which would have happened sooner or later. None of the other theories out there, either. The only lasting effect is that I'll be around forever, I'll always know exactly how to handle being a wolf, I'll always know how to be an alpha and handle new phasings. From my tribe's point of view, that's a huge freakin' benefit."

"So you imprinted on me because it's good for your tribe."

"I know it sounds cold, but I'd rather it be that than...anything else."

"Why? What else could it be?"

"Oh," Jake says uncomfortably, "There are other theories. Stuff about, you know...genes..."

It hits Nessie what Jake is getting at. "Oh," she says. "Okay, I get it, I get it. You don't have to say any more."

"Thanks," he says, sounding relieved. "And I mean, I used to think imprinting was all about dictating love. That's how it seemed with Sam and Emily. And I hated that. I hated the whole idea of it. There was a while when I hoped I would imprint, so I would stop caring about your mom. But it doesn't work that way. It's not like I imprinted on you and then you just _replaced_her."

"Um, that's good," Nessie says drily, "Since I was a baby and all."

Jake laughs easily at this. "Yeah, yeah," he says. "I know, imprinting is gross and wrong. Trust me, there's nothing you can say about it that I haven't already thought. But honestly, all it did was realign my priorities. I realized what a trainwreck it would have been if your mom ever actually reciprocated. And I realized that a lot of what I was feeling for her was just me projecting my own shit onto her, it had nothing to do with her at all. Honestly, I didn't even know her that well, I was just a testosterone-driven teenager with mommy issues. She was a pretty girl who knew me when I was young and my mom was still alive. Sometimes, that's all it takes to convince yourself you're in love. Not to mention, I had a competitive streak and I couldn't stand the thought of being beaten at _anything _by a Cullen." A note of worry enters his voice. "Oh god, is it weird that I'm saying all this about your mom? It's weird, isn't it? We don't have to talk about it if you don't want..."

"No, I want to hear," says Nessie. No one ever talks about the recent past with her. The distant past, sure, the days of jazz and horses and bayonets and Latin liturgies, but not the past decade. She's certainly never heard Jake speak so openly about this before. But it seems to be the witching hour: all _sorts_of things are coming out, things she's never suspected about the guy who has always been her best friend. Nessie feels like she is getting a rare glimpse into what makes him tick, and she is consumed by curiosity.

"Well, when I saw you," he says, "I guess I realized how empty Bella was. How empty my feelings for her were. No offense or anything, that's just how I feel." Nessie isn't offended. She's sometimes thought that herself. "Anyway, love shouldn't be dictated. Which is fine, because the imprint isn't forcing me to _love_you."

"It's not?" Nessie looks out her window toward the west and sees the moon sinking over the trees.

"Hell no! The imprint forces me to _need_you. It ties me to you, and because you're immortal it ties me to life. That's fine. I can handle that. But if I'm gonna love you, I'd rather be free to do it on my own terms. I'd rather love you because you're really smart and you're always nice to people, even if they're kind of douchey to you. And you're one of the most creative people I know. You're good for me. Sometimes it seems like my life can be boiled down to two things, struggling to manage the logistics of the pack, and struggling to make ends meet so I can actually go to college and make something of myself. You're the one thing in my life that isn't a struggle. You're my happy place."

Nessie feels a warm glow at these words. She is pleased and honored to be loved by someone as cool as Jake. "You're good for me, too," she says. If he were here, she would touch his hand and show him all the things she loves about him, but she doesn't know how to say it in words over a phone. "And I'm glad you told me all this stuff."

"Yeah," says Jake, sounding a little bemused. "I don't know why I started vomiting family history..."

"I like your word-vomit," Nessie says. "How come you've never told me this stuff before?"

"I don't know," says Jake. "It didn't seem...I don't know. It just never came up."

"Well, you're always listening to my navel-gazing," Nessie says jokingly. "It's only fair that I should listen to yours."

"Sure, sure," says Jake, and then Nessie hears a rustle that means Jake is covering the receiver with his hand. He comes back a moment later.

"Something wrong?" she asks.

"Oh," says Jake, and he sounds oddly tense, "I thought I heard my dad moving around."

"Is he okay?" Nessie asks with some concern.

"Yeah, he's...aw, screw it. No, he's not okay." There's an angry undercurrent to Jake's voice that Nessie rarely hears, and she immediately hates that anything can make him sound like that. "Dammit. He either won't take his medicine or he won't eat right, and there's nothing I can do about it, I just have to watch him trash his body and it sucks. He had a lot of sugar today and then he forgot to take his insulin and...god, I just hate it. I wish he would get his head out of his ass."

This is a complete one-eighty from his tone a moment ago. Nessie knows that Jake only lives with his father so that he can take care of him, that he would move out if he could, and she is furious at Billy Black for putting so much on his son. Jake sounds strangely young, his voice stretching thin as it coils through the phone and into her ear.

"Its not your fault," she says.

"Maybe not, but that won't be much comfort when he cake-and-soda-s himself to death."

"That won't happen," Nessie says.

"Sure it will," Jake says. "Why shouldn't it? He obviously doesn't care."

"He cares a lot, Jake," Nessie says. "He cares about you. You know he does."

"I just hate this. Oh god, I'm even depressing myself. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get into this whiny crap tonight, it doesn't do anyone any good."

"It's okay, Jake," Nessie says. She has a powerful desire to make his pain go away, and no idea how to actually do it. She doesn't know what to say, so she sticks with the truth. "Jake, I don't really know what to tell you that will make it all better. I don't think there is one single answer to this. I know that you always have to be strong for the pack, and for your dad. You don't have to be strong for me too. You can just...rant and spew bile and be totally unreasonable if you want. You can say that stuff to me even if you can't say it to anyone else."

"Yeah, like I'm just gonna dump all my shit on you, just because you're too nice to hang up on me. No thanks." She can tell from his voice that he is only half-teasing: what, does he think he's _imposing_on her?

"Jacob!" Nessie says. She almost never uses his given name, and this gets his attention. "If I tell you it's okay to vent, that's because I mean it. I go to you all the time with my problems. You can come to me with yours. Okay?" He starts to say something about _imprinting_but she cuts in. "And don't you dare say it's just because you're my imprint, not after that little speech you just gave me."

"Well, if you say so," he says, sounding more relaxed now. "But you know, you're _my_imprint, not the other way around."

"Psh, whatever," Nessie scoffs. "I loved you back when you were still trying to figure out how to dump me on the nearest windswept crag. So you can just take your imprint and shove it up your..."

"Up my...?" Jake prompts with amusement in his voice, as Nessie's bravado falters.

"Up your left nostril," she says with dignity.

"Thanks," he says, laughing. "I'll remember that."

* * *

**Hey friends! Thank you all for your comments. I'm always eager to hear what you guys think about this stuff. A few of you mentioned a desire to a.)not see Jake hurt and b.)not have Jake get with other ladies. I certainly have no desire to make Nessie just relive her annoying mother's life. I hated Bella the first time around; why would I like her any better a second? However, I am intrigued by the idea (which I have encountered many places, not just here) that Jake must **_**never never never**_ **be sexually attracted to anyone other than Nessie, and vice versa. In reality, I don't have a problem with people marrying their first love. In fact, I **_**so **_**don't have a problem with it that I did it myself, a year ago.**

**What I do have a problem with, however, is the way Smeyer presents first loves. Let's look at this for a minute. Vampires, which are obviously just Smeyer's little avatar for The Perfect Human, **_**only fall in love once**_**. If you are a vampire, your first love will be your only love, forever and ever and ever, and if they die, you will never ever love again. She gives us this message again and again, with the vampires, with Bella, with poor love-lorn Chief Swan, even with Jessica and Mike who can't apparently break the cycle of dating only each other. **

**We only get a couple of exceptions to this rule, and they are sort of the exceptions that **_**prove **_**the rule: the lesser one is Renee, who finds a second love. But Renee is also presented as very flaky and flighty, someone no one would ever want to emulate. Remember, kids, only a total flake would ever love two people in one lifetime! The second is, of course, Jake. And how did Smeyer resolve Jake's conundrum? Why, she just forced him to love someone else, of course! With magic! Because it would never happen **_**naturally**_**. He would never recover from Bella in his own sweet time and find some nice girl or lady or divorcee and settle down and have a normal, happy life, oh no! He has to be shoehorned into the most irritating, unrealistic narrative cheat of all time: he has to **_**imprint**_**.**

**How is this okay? How do we just accept this? I mean, I write almost exclusively about imprints, because I am desperate to get some closure on this gaping literary wound (or "literary"). I don't have a problem with marrying your first love, but I **_**do**_ **have a problem with mandating that your first love be your only love ever, that if you mess that one up you will **_**never get a second chance**_**, there are no take-backs, people's hearts don't and never should change. I suspect a lot of this has to do with Smeyer's personal demons, perhaps her feelings about marrying so young and popping out kids right away, in a culture where second thoughts are really frowned upon. How can she **_**not**_ **feel some twinges of uncertainty, even regret? The stakes are so high for her and for women like her. Maybe the only way for her to cope is to convince herself that her way is definitively The Only Right Way. Maybe she hopes that if she says it enough times, it'll start to be true.**

**Anyway, the long and short is that yes, I totally understand and even sympathize with those of you who are deeply opposed to Jake/Nessie ever being in love with anyone not each other. I get that. We all have certain requirements to make our ships float just so. But I refuse to play into Smeyer's diabolical hands. I'm not saying the Jake and Nessie in **_**this **_**story will necessarily hook up with other people. I haven't written that far ahead; I'll put down whatever feels right when I get to it. **

**I **_**am **_**saying that this is important to me. While I appreciate that many of you disagree, I request only that you disagree with me politely and thoughtfully.**

**Whew. I'm assuming few of you read all that, but if you did, here's a shoebox full of Pacific Coast porn. Review if you have any thoughts about my story, or my rant, or, you know...life.  
**


	8. Puberty, Ugh

**Hey friends! Thanks for your reviews, they really made me grin into next week. I have the most thoughtful and thought-provoking reviewers out there. I hope you enjoy the chapter. Let me know if you do, let me know if you don't.**

* * *

Nessie's friends decide as a group to forgo their freshman prom. Nessie likes this agreement just fine, partly because she is still intimidated by the sophisticated type of social scene a prom represents, and partly because she is certain she couldn't get a date if she tried (which she wouldn't).

About that, however, she is mistaken. In the weeks leading up to prom, she endures an increasing stream of prom invites. Most come from people she at least knows in passing, but a few come from near-total strangers, not all of them male. Nessie doesn't really understand why so many people are asking her out all of a sudden. Beyond her small group of friends, which has peaked at about a dozen social throwbacks of varying degrees of coolness, few of her schoolmates have taken the trouble to get to know her. She isn't annoyed by the attention, exactly, but she feels uncomfortably conspicuous.

"Why would _he _ask me to the prom?" she asks Aunt Rosie one day as they walk out to the car together. The "he" in question is a sophomore track star with whom she shares no classes or, as far as she can discern, any common interests.

"Well," says her aunt, as one pointing out the obvious, "I don't know if you've noticed this, but you're really pretty." Rosalie tosses her long golden hair over her shoulder in slow motion and adopts a comically husky accent. "You're irresistible, dahling."

Nessie tucks her own brown hair behind her ears. "Be that as it may," she says a little severely, "He doesn't even know me."

"Honey, this is high school!" her aunt laughs. "What more does he _need _to know? I've already had four boys ask me out in the last month, none of whom even know me well enough to realize I'm with Emmett. Taking a hottie to prom is like a badge of honor. It almost doesn't even have anything to do with you."

"Well, _that's _nice," mutters Nessie. "Thanks."

"Hey," says Rosalie, "ninety-five percent of the people you meet in your life won't get to know you all that well; most of them will judge you based on your looks or your sense of humor or how smart or nice you are, but very few will judge you based on all those things put together. That's not necessarily a bad thing, honey. I mean, it helps you sort the wheat from the chaff, right? And it's like that for everyone, not just you. You have some close friends who love you for who you are, and some acquaintances who like you for the one or two qualities about you that they know, and you just have to learn to tune out the all background noise. Hey, babe, I hope you're not too upset by this."

"No," says Nessie thoughtfully, "not exactly _upset_. I mean, I guess it's nice that people are predisposed to like me, even if it's not because of anything I did. I just didn't realize so many people even know who I am."

"For a girl with 20/2 vision in both eyes," says Rosalie, "You are remarkably unobservant. Anyway, there really is something basically irresistible about you. It's like you have all the allure of a full vampire without any of the subliminal danger signals. People notice you way more than you notice them."

Nessie doesn't know what to feel about this. She's flattered, of course, that so many people admire her beauty. But she can't help but prefer the camaraderie of her close friends, who acknowledge but don't dwell on her looks.

* * *

Nessie finishes well in all of her subjects, pulling a year-end GPA of 3.8. Her father chides her for the .2-point drop that was a result of a complete lack of preparation for her math final. She does well at math when Rosalie is her teacher, but the standardized testing at school is bafflingly arbitrary, and frankly way less interesting than playing video games well into the night with Will and Lizzie.

She spends the whole summer ping-ponging between their Canadian home on the outskirts of Sooke and the rez or Grandpa Charlie's house in Forks. Jake is hardly ever around; when not wolfed up, he must spend his free time working on the schoolwork for the classes he takes year-round at the local community college. When not doing that, he's working three jobs to pay tuition. Needless to say, the Cullens offered to pay for Jake to go to a higher-ranking college, perhaps one closer to Sooke, along with a handsome allowance; _also_ needless to say, Jake refused point-blank. Even the lure of living nearer to Nessie can't cut through the genetic impulse he feels to stay available to his tribe, and nothing on planet Earth will ever induce him to accept an _allowance _from the Cullens.

Nessie doesn't care how rich or poor Jake is, but it tugs at her heart to see him struggling so hard just to get by, especially when she has so much of everything. Unlike her family, she knows better than to make him tacky and self-righteous offers of monetary assistance, but there must be _something _she can do that will ease his burden.

Finally, it hits her. There's not much she can do about his finances without offending him miserably. She isn't much help when it comes to schoolwork or his duties to the pack, as any help she offered in that department would only slow him down. But Nessie is a darn fine cook, if she does say so herself. So Nessie takes to spending every weekend on the rez, from Friday morning till Sunday night when she returns to Sooke with her family. She usually hangs out with Emily and between the two of them they cook up enough freezable food to feed a small army. By Sunday night, Nessie has usually churned out half a dozen loaves of whole-wheat bread, whole legs of lamb and pork in slow-cook sauce, vats of vegetable-and-bean stew, and about ten family-sized fruit desserts. She is sure this will be enough to feed Jake for a week, or at least it will help. The guy consumes ungodly quantities of food, and this way he won't have to take time out of his already busy schedule to prepare it or (she feels sneaky about this) spend his hard-earned money on the ingredients. One day she and Grandpa Charlie pick up a used restaurant-style freezer and shove it in a back corner in Jake's garage. That freezer is always brimming on Sunday nights and it is always empty on Friday mornings, so she must be doing _some _good. And Jake is always most complimentary of her cooking, thanking her with a big squeezy hug.

Jake only sees Nessie about once a weekend, twice if they're lucky, and he only makes it up to Sooke to visit her once during the week. Their visits only last a couple of hours at the most. But it sure beats the twice-monthly schedule they are forced to keep during the school year.

* * *

On the Sunday before her sophomore year starts up, Nessie is hanging out in the room Leah Clearwater rents in a house on the rez. Seth, Collin and Embry are all sprawled in various states of undress while Leah flips frenetically through her CD collection, looking for records to queue up for the evening. Nessie is flipping through Leah's collection of magazines, not really reading a word but trying to keep from feeling antsy until Jake shows up.

"Dude, Nessie," pipes up Collin, "those shrimp things you made this week were freaky good. Bit shrimpy, if you know what I mean, but good. Of course, Seth wound up eating most of them..."

"I was hungry!" says Seth. "Besides, Jake told me to help myself!"

Nessie fumbles her magazine. "Wait, didn't Jake have any?"

"Oh, sure," says Embry carelessly, "He had the first one. He always has the first bite of everything so he can tell you how it turned out."

"Oh, how...how thoughtful of him," Nessie falters. "How much does he usually eat?" She tries to sound casual.

"Well," says Collin, "I'd say he eats about one of everything."

"How can he even get his hands on the rest, with you pigs around?" demands Leah, tuning in. "Nessie's cooking is wasted on you guys." Leah turns to Nessie. "I, for one, appreciate your attempts to make healthy meals. I'm really going to enjoy not having high blood pressure, diabetes and a clogged heart by the time I'm thirty."

"Oh," says Nessie. "No problem." She stares at the magazine in her hands without seeing it. "So...Jake hardly eats any of it, then, huh?" What does he not like her cooking? He's always so nice about it! Maybe she should try some different recipes. Is she using too much meat? That hardly seems likely. Maybe she could—

"Hey, Nessie," says Leah, breaking into the trainwreck of Nessie's thoughts. "Don't be offended. It's just that Collin's and Embry's parents don't know about the wolf thing, and _they _don't have imprints to cook for them. Or jobs. It's Jake's responsibility to make sure they're getting enough to eat. Its right there in his job description. Page six, right after _kill bad guys_ and _smack Embry around._"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," says Embry, "Is that why you're asking? Listen, we'll stop eating all Jake's food if it means that much to you."

"No you won't," says Nessie, forcing a smile. Now she feels selfish, throwing a tantrum just because her best friend is all generous and self-sacrificing. "I don't mind, anyway. I was just surprised, that's all."

"Hey," says Embry as a thought dawns on him. "Come to think of it, I'm not sure we were supposed to tell you we've been eating all the food. You're not gonna tell Jake, are you?"

"I won't say a word," says Nessie. "I'll just have to make more, that's all."

"Ooh," says Collin excitedly, "If you make that shrimp thing again, can you make, like, four times as much? And put my name on it?"

* * *

Nessie's sophomore year is an improvement on what came before. She is starting to get the hang of the whole interacting-with-people bit. She schedules as many classes with Aunt Alice as she can, and she lands in only two classes with her parents. Honors English, of course, and gym, which only happens twice a week. Gym is pretty fun; she and her dad usually end up snickering their way through the period as they make deliberate unforced errors. They thus achieve reputations as spectacularly awful athletes, which just tickles Bella pink. Bella, having been a hideous athlete all her life, is still enjoying the hand-eye coordination and durability of being a vampire. Her only danger is that she won't be able to control her strength, but luckily she only pops a few basketballs, shreds one baseball and digs one long gash into the track field. That's still not as much collateral damage as Emmett used to dish out.

The most horrifying moment of the semester arrives on the day when her gym period is taken over by a sex-ed instructor who teaches them all about AIDS, STI's and, horror of horrors, _condoms_. The class would be awkward enough even _without _her father sitting two desks away and reading her thoughts. Nessie can't tell who is more pathologically uncomfortable with this, Edward or herself. When the instructor starts passing around bananas, Nessie is about ready to bury her head in the sand forever, and from the look on his face her father wouldn't say no to a nice distant fox-hole either. Bella is at least a little cooler about it, joking with Nessie as she efficiently rolls a rubber onto her assigned Chiquita. In her nervousness and inexperience, Nessie mis-gauges the strength required to get the darn thing on and snaps two in a row. Her mother takes pity on her and asks for a replacement so that Nessie won't have to. By the end of the period, Nessie is

A.) highly proficient in condom application and  
B.) never, ever, _ever_ going to look her father in the eye again.

* * *

Kevin asks Nessie to the winter formal and, unspeakably relieved that at least someone she knows is asking her this time around, she accepts. Not that this stems the tide of invitations.

Her parents give the winter formal a miss. Nessie has a growing and horrifying suspicion that they skip all the extracurricular stuff at school because they are...they're having...ugh. They're having Chiquitas. For four years this hasn't occurred to her, and now that it has she can't scrub her brain clean enough. _Ew_.

So she gets ready for the winter formal with her aunts and her grandmother, who does something clever with Nessie's hair to make it look like a pre-Raphaelite painting. Alice dresses her in a very pretty sage-green silk toga-y dress that almost—_almost!_—makes her look like she has real hips.

She meets Kevin at the hall where the dance is being held, and he looks very cute with his dreadlocks tied away from his face for once and his neatly buttoned-down shirt. Nessie has a grand time dancing with Kevin and Will and Lizzie and Alice and Jasper. At the end of the evening, Kevin surprises her by kissing her very nervously on the lips. It feels pretty nice. There are no fireworks or anything, but his lips are very soft and anyway, it's quite novel. Nessie doesn't think anything of it, really, and she spends her winter break as usual, splitting her time between Sooke and Forks, cooking up whole turkeys for Jake and his pack. She hangs out with Kevin when she's in Sooke, going out to see movies and grabbing lunch. Just before the second semester begins, Kevin asks her shyly if she'd like to be his girlfriend.

"What would that entail?" she asks cautiously. Kevin seems surprised by this question and squints at her quizzically. He has very pretty eyes, Nessie realizes, sort of almond-shaped with long thick lashes.

"Um, we could kiss," he says. "And hold hands and stuff. I don't know. Just...boyfriend-girlfriend stuff."

"I guess we could try that," agrees Nessie. Might as well. It _was _pretty fun kissing him.

So that's what they do. They hold hands at school, and Kevin walks her to her classes or she walks him to his, and they progress to full-on tonsil hockey after about a month. Frankly, being Kevin's girlfriend isn't all that different from _not _being Kevin's girlfriend, come right down to it.

Kevin even comes down to Forks one weekend with Nessie, and she is stymied to think of something they can do together that won't revolve around Jake. She admits that she usually just spends her weekends cooking for her friends, and so Kevin comes with her to Charlie's house and self-consciously chops onions and root vegetables while she does all the fancy stuff. At lunchtime, Jake clomps in, shirtless and gigantic as always, shiny with sweat and caked with mud and looking sort of impossibly _male_ and _grown-up_. Kevin stares openly at Jake while he strides over to Nessie and sweeps her into a crushing hug.

"Hi, Jake!" Nessie says happily. "This is my boyfriend Kevin! We're making beef-and-barley stew! Want some?"

Jake grins at Kevin and shakes his hand, and as far as Nessie is concerned nothing happens that is out of the ordinary. But later, two things happen: first, she notices Kevin flexing in the reflection of the kitchen window. He's never done that before, probably because he is so gangly that there's not really too much to flex. Second, she happens to overhear Jake and Kevin talking while she's in the bathroom.

"So, you're seeing Nessie, huh?" says Jake blandly. "That's cool."

"Uh, yeah. How do you, um...how do you know Nessie?"

"Oh, just a friend of the family."

"Yeah, she mentioned that."

"She's a really great girl, isn't she?"

"Uh huh."

"So if you fuck with her, I'll fuck with you. 'Kay?"

"Huh?"

"I said, good luck with her."

"Oh. Uh...oh."

Nessie can hear Kevin's heart pounding almost as fast as Jake's. At no point in the encounter did Jake's voice lose the pleasantly polite tone of a host. Nessie is not surprised that Jake feels protective of her, but she is unbelievably embarrassed. It is all she can do not to let on that she heard.

She sends Kevin out to the car ahead of her and turns on Jake.

"Don't scare my boyfriend!" she commands sternly.

"What are you talking about? I'm not scary!" Jake is loaded down with bags and bags full of tupperware to take back to the rez with him, and it's true that he isn't scary—not to Nessie, anyway. To Nessie he is everything in the world that is _un_scary.

"Please don't threaten him, Jake," she says quietly. "I mean it. He's been on edge ever since I went to the bathroom."

"Ness," says Jake, putting down his load and gently tilting Nessie's chin up so he can look her in the eyes. "I'm sorry if I offended you. I'll be more subtle in the future. But you know, it freaks me right the fuck out that all of a sudden you are old enough to date. I really don't want to see you get hurt."

"That's fair," says Nessie patiently, "but it's not your job to protect me from this stuff. Kevin's cool, I promise. He's fine. And even if he weren't, well...isn't that just what humans do? They screw up until they get it right?"

Jake looks up and away, scratches his head. "Yeah," he says. "I guess."

"Just...please don't say stuff like that anymore, okay, Jake? I don't need any more protectors."

"Okay," says Jake, sighing heavily. "I'm sorry. You're right." He looks down at her out of the corner of his eye. "When did you suddenly get old enough to have a boyfriend, anyway?" he asks, the beginning of a grin tickling the corners of his mouth.

"Oh," jokes Nessie, "I'd say I hit that magic age right at the end of winter break."

"Nice," laughs Jake. "Well, I'll try not to be scary if you promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"You'll tell me if you want me to beat anyone up. If that little fucker—"

"Jake!"

"Okay, if that _jolly young chap _tries to jerk you around, I will totally thump his ass into tomorrow."

"Sure thing, Jake," says Nessie, laughing. "Whatever you say."

* * *

**In case you wondered, 20/2 is the vision of hawks, which have the sharpest eyes on earth. I figure Nessie sees as well as a hawk, and a full vampire sees as well as a hawk with a periscope.**


	9. The Trickster

**Hey guys! This is a little bit of a weird chapter, but I was feeling…abstract, I guess. **

**I have an idea for the Festivus season which is upon us. Leave me a short prompt in a review to this or any other chapter; after a week or two (depending on how many and how quickly people respond), I will try to work as many prompts as possible into an upcoming chapter. The prompts can be anything from an anecdote or episode you'd like to see, or a theme or even just an image or dream you'd like worked in. Be creative, and I'll try to include as many as I can. Happy Festivus, y'all!**

* * *

Everything is red and covered in bugs.

_Oh, great_, thinks Nessie, _It's one of __those_.

Well, no way of getting out of it. Nessie settles in for a mildly trippy dream. She has them when she overheats in her sleep, which happens about once a week _despite_ the fact that her family is more than rich enough to afford the very fanciest in climate-control. She figures it's a result of her weirdly high temperature.

Not that she minds, of course: her dreams can be very exciting sometimes. She's heard from her friends at school that human dreams are usually murky and indistinct, but hers are always sharp as a belltone, probably because of the half-vampire thing. And, although she doesn't have the same control over her dreams as she does over her waking mind, she almost always knows she's dreaming. _Almost_.

Nessie looks around her subconscious and takes stock. Yep, bugs everywhere. There's a _really frickin' huge_ centipede trying to climb up her pantleg; Nessie reaches down and brushes it gently away. A black widow is making inroads on her other leg, and Nessie plucks it delicately between thumb and forefinger, holds it by one leg and looks at it.

"What are you doing?" she asks in a sing-songy voice. "Nothing up there for you, little miss!"

"I'm your spirit guide," says the black widow in a deep baritone. "I'm here to take you where you need to go."

"I don't believe in spirit guides," says Nessie. "I don't even believe in spirits."

"Too bad for you," says the black widow, and its whole head turns into one giant fang that expands painfully through Nessie's flesh and into her bloodstream.

"Ow!" she shouts, dropping the spider. As it scurries away, it is its normal size once more. Nessie looks at her wrist, which has already swollen to the size of a loaf of Italian bread. She pokes one finger at it and feels fluid sloshing around under the skin. It hurts. A lot.

"What was that for?" she shouts after the spider, but it is long gone.

"Oh," says the puma, "Spiders always do that. You mustn't mind Black Widow. He's a trickster."

"My arm hurts," says Nessie pathetically, sitting on the muddy ground and cradling her wrist gingerly in her other arm. "Will you make it feel better?"

"Sure thing, Nessareen," says the puma. "Here." He trots over and breathes on her arm, and at once she feels a magical release of pain.

"Oh, thank you," she says, her eyes sliding closed.

"My pweasure," says the puma thickly, and Nessie opens her eyes to see her whole right forearm fast disappearing into the puma's mouth. She looks down: no arm. Nothing at all. Just a bleeding stump.

"Hey!" she shrieks, jumping to her feet and racing after the puma, who whisks his tail playfully as he darts away from her. "Give it back!"

"Give it back!" he shouts mockingly over his shoulder. "Give it back, give it back, give it back, back, back, bag, bat, sat, flat, shat!" He disappears over the horizon, leaving nothing behind but little puma pellets.

* * *

Nessie wakes up with a lurch. Her mom is sitting on the edge of her bed, a concerned look on her face.

"You were having a bad dream, sweetie," she says, stroking Nessie's hair away from her sweaty face. "Something about bats?"

"Ugh," groans Nessie. "There was a puma who stole my arm. Man, I hate dreams like that."

"I see," says her mother. "Well, are you going to get it back?"

"Get what back?" Nessie yawns widely and stretches.

"Your arm."

"I guess I'd better," says Nessie, inspecting her stump. "Where do you think I should look?"

"Maybe we'd better follow the bats." Her mother stands and straightens her gray t-shirt in a businesslike way.

"You're gonna help me find my arm?" Nessie asks, delighted. "Mom, that's so nice of you!"

"It's nothing, love," says her mother. "Nothing at all. Nothing, nothing, nothing."

Nessie looks out the window and sees legions of bats swooping and thrilling through the twilit air outside her room. They look like they're having such fun. Nessie goes to the window and throws it wide. Her mother is beside her, looking wistfully at the wheeling creatures.

"Do you think they miss being alive?" her mother asks sadly. "Do you think they miss having a heartbeat?"

"Probably," says Nessie, holding out her good arm for a line of dead bats to cluster under. "I don't know what I would do if I had to give up my heart."

"Oh, love," says her mother in a foolish falsetto. "You'll give your heart away someday. Just because you give it away doesn't mean it's not still yours!"

Nessie gives her arm a shake. The bats are holding fast with their little claws, but she can see bits of flesh peeling away from their bones. They used to be so beautiful, she knows. Bats are lovely when they're alive, cute like mice and so endearingly frenetic in flight. They have such soft, leathery wings, too. Nessie wishes _she_ had nice leathery wings. All she has are these crummy old albatross wings, not good for anything. She gives her wings a twitch to settle the feathers and looks over at her mother, who has turned to stone. Nessie waves her hand in front of her mom's eyes, but Bella is made of marble, even her soft gray t-shirt is marble, and she can't see anything anymore.

"Oh, well," sighs Nessie, scraping the chorus line of bat corpses from their perch under her forearm. "I guess I'll just have to find it by myself." She jumps out the window in search of her puma and her right arm, and the rush to terminal velocity jolts her system and wakes her up.

* * *

Nessie goes downstairs to breakfast. Her father and grandfather are at the breakfast table, reading: Carlisle from his many doctor-type papers, and Edward from his copy of _Romeo and Juliet_.

"What's for breakfast?" asks Nessie, crossing to the refrigerator and opening the door.

"Juice," says Carlisle without looking up. "Any kind you want."

"Mm," says Nessie, inspecting her options. There is a glass jar full of _nun juice_, a little crystal decanter brimming with _eau de orphan_, a jug of _court executioner, _and a ruby-red carafe of _Jake: all kinds_. Nessie grabs the latter and heads outside, chugging Jake's blood thirstily.

"You know," she tells the puma, "They shouldn't call it juice. It's not really juice at all. It's blood." She giggles and burps wetly, a bubble of red escaping her lips.

"It makes them feel better," says the puma, his tail lashing imperiously. "They don't like to face themselves. They won't face their nature."

"Hey, now," says Nessie defensively, "Just because they're vampires doesn't mean they're automatically evil or something. Ask Carlisle, he'll tell you!"

The puma gazes at her impassively, then yawns and shows all his teeth (along with a fragment of Nessie's arm). "I wasn't referring to their _vampiric_ nature," says the puma. "Being a vampire is not inherently good or bad, it just is. I was referring to their _choices_."

"Ahhh," says Nessie, nodding sagely. "You mean how they're friends with basically nothing but mass murderers, and how they just let the Volturi go off back to Italy even though they could have stopped 'em, easy?"

"That's the ticket," says the puma, and from between his teeth shoots a little scrap of paper which flutters and floats in midair before Nessie's face. Bemusedly she reaches up and grabs it. It reads, _Ticket: ain't it just?_ Nessie slides the ticket into her pocket, patting it down securely so it can't escape.

"Well," she says, "Thanks for the talk. Can I have my arm back, please?"

In answer, the puma laughs at her and swallows her whole.

* * *

Nessie wakes up panting. In her sleep she got her head worked under her pillow, and it gave her some funky dreams. She dreamed she was eaten by a—

Oh.

"Hello," she says wearily.

"Hello," says the puma. "Glad to see you're awake. I was getting worried when you didn't move after I ate you."

"Hey," says Nessie, looking around. "How are you sitting right there? Are you inside yourself?"

"Of course I am," says the puma calmly, looking around at the burbling stomach lining and the spasming sphincters and the chewed-up bolus of arm. "I swallowed myself when I swallowed you. I would never send you somewhere dangerous without help."

"Thanks," says Nessie bitterly. "Can I have my arm back?"

"Take it," says the puma magnanimously, gesturing at the blob. "It's all yours."

"But…" Nessie stares hopelessly at the wad of undifferentiated bone and skin. "I can't use that! You ruined it!"

"I'm sorry," says the puma. "It was the only way."

"The only way to what?"

"To get you to listen. Don't you miss your arm?"

"More than anything," says Nessie fervently, looking down at her stump, which is now covered in moss and crawling with ants.

"Well, you should be more careful with your belongings if you don't want them eaten," says the puma. "Especially something as important as your heart."

"My heart?" repeats Nessie, confused. "But you didn't eat my heart, you ate my—" No, he can't have eaten her arm, because her arm is still attached to her elbow. Anyway, her heart stopped beating ages ago. _That_ must be what the puma ate. Silly of her. How could she not have noticed?

"Why did you eat my heart?" she asks him quietly.

"That's what I do," says the puma. "You offered it to me. So I ate it."

"I miss it," says Nessie, fat tears swelling up in her eyes and beginning to splash noisily down her chin. "I miss it!"

"I can't give it back," says the puma. "You don't really want it back, anyway. Trust me."

"What do I do now?" wails Nessie.

"You'll have to eat mine," says the puma. "Here." He lies down on his back, legs twisting in the air, and turns his head away. Nessie notices that he has too many legs, but she doesn't stop to count them. She crouches beside him and digs her hands fearlessly through his ribcage, pulls out his still-beating heart, and swallows it whole. It tastes delicious. It settles into the place where hers used to be and falls easily into a rhythm that is like her own but a little faster.

"Thank you, Puma," says Nessie, putting her arms around the giant cat which doesn't move, which will never move again. "That's the ticket." She strokes his giant shaggy head and sings him to death.

* * *

Nessie wakes up with sun on her face. The phone is ringing.

"Hello?" she answers it groggily.

"Hey, Ness," says Jake. "I was wondering if you—"

Nessie slams the phone down in its charger, because the puma's voice was Jake's.


	10. Life Lessons with Jake and Beer

**Hey guys! Forgive me for skipping a week. It's been busy for me. But here's a chapter with plenty of Jake in it! And for those of you in the northern hemisphere, Happy Winter! (Happy Summer to those in the southern hemisphere!)**

* * *

Nessie's mom and her aunts and her grandmother have all gotten it into her heads that having a boyfriend is an indicator of kinda-sorta growing-upness, and they all want to start doing kinda-sorta grown-up things with her. For Grandmother, that means redecorating her room so it stops screaming "Little girl! Little girl!" and starts screaming "Tasteful young adult! Tasteful young adult!"

For her mom, it means a lot of long, boring lectures on how just because she has a period and a boyfriend doesn't mean she needs to rush anything, and to remember she's still only six years old and if she isn't very, very careful about her actions she will get Kevin sent to jail, and we wouldn't want that now would we?

It actually takes Nessie a long time to figure out where her mother is going with this, but when she does she bursts out, "Oh my god, are you talking about sex? Calm down, Mom, I'm not there yet." Whereupon her mother looks incredibly relieved and the awkward, forced young-adult conversations are allowed to subside.

For Rosalie, Nessie's budding adulthood represents a chance to do all things human. They listen to music and dance around the house together and they both sign up for a triathlon and they do some community theater in the spring and Rosalie takes Nessie out for lunch on weekends.

And for Alice, it means clothes. So many clothes. Clothes coming out of Nessie's ears.

"Okay, try this one," says Alice, holding up a chiffon blouse with a silk bustier attached..

"Aunt Alice," groans Nessie, "I'm still half-human. I still get tired sometimes."

Alice furrows her brow. "But we've barely even started! Let's just do this last pile-"

"Alice, this next one makes _seventy-eight blouses _I've tried on. I needed to take a break like, fifty shirts ago! I like doing this stuff but I swear my boobs are starting to chafe."

"I'm sorry, darling!" exclaims her aunt, tossing aside the bra and zipping over to Nessie with a bottle of water and a sandwich that, as far as Nessie can tell, just came out of nowhere. "I didn't even notice. I was having so much fun!"

"I was too," says Nessie. "Let's do it again. _After_ breakfast, maybe?"

* * *

Nessie likes dating Kevin...or whatever it is they're doing instead of dating. They don't actually _go _anywhere. But they spend the whole summer before her junior year sucking face outside of various ice cream parlors in Sooke. Making out is fun! It's sort of squishy and if Kevin hasn't brushed his teeth in a while is a little sour, but generally it just feels exciting and new.

But after school starts back up, it stops being fun. Kevin gets sort of clingy. It's annoying, frankly. She is a junior now-an upperclassman, at last! And everything should be awesome. She feels so much more confident than she did two years ago. Under Alice's guidance she has crafted a personal style; with help from her father she is an adequate singer; under Emmett's tutelage she has gotten really, really good at looking cool while she does ordinary things like walk to class and buy gas for the Volvo.

Her late-night conversations with Jake have become a tradition of sorts. So she can only see him once every two weeks? No biggie, she'll talk to him for four hours a night after her family has gotten involved in their seedy nighttime activities. And Jake never talks down to her anymore, although he's the only one who doesn't. He actually treats her like a grown-up, or at any rate like an almost-not-teenager-anymore.

"How's the boyfriend?" he asks her one evening. He called her this time, as she was settling into a bubble bath. She can hear him chewing something crunchy on the other end.

"He's okay," she says. "He's not exactly...well, I don't know."

"Uh oh," says Jake. "What's the problem? What'd he do?"

"Nothing, nothing," sighs Nessie. "I just...I don't look forward to seeing him any more. I mean, no matter how many times I see you I'm always excited to see you again. Shouldn't it be like that with Kevin?"

"Well," says Jake, "Maybe the magic just isn't there. You don't _have _to stay with someone who doesn't interest you, Ness."

"I don't want to hurt his feelings," says Nessie. "He's really sensitive. I think he gets jealous."

"Oh?" says Jake-carefully again. "About what?"

"Well, he gets really quiet when I talk to other guys for a long time. Even if I'm not flirting or anything! And he used to love when I would wear really cute stuff but now he's always telling me how much better I look in sweatshirts and jeans."

"Nessie," says Jake, very seriously. "Does he ever try to keep you from seeing me?"

"From seeing you?" echoes Nessie.

"Or anyone else, maybe your family or your other friends?"

"No," says Nessie. "I mean, he doesn't _like _that I always ditch him every second weekend...but what can he really do?"

"A lot," grumbles Jake. "Ness, I want to see you. As soon as possible. I want to talk about this more and it's hard to do on the phone. Can I come up there this weekend?"

"Kevin wants to take me to the-"

"Please, Ness? It's important."

"Okay, Jake. Of course."

* * *

Kevin is none too pleased to be blown off for the handsome giant, but Jake picks Nessie up from school in his Rabbit and there's not much Kevin can do about it. He gives in with ill-grace, scowling as his girlfriend drives away.

"Where are we going?" asks Nessie. "We aren't going to get ice cream, are we?" She is only half-kidding. Ice cream is for loser babies.

"Nope," says Jake. "Ness, how old would you say you are now? Approximately?"

"Um...like, physically? Cause technically I'm six and change."

"No, I mean how old are you really?"

"I don't know," says Nessie. "Maybe like, seventeen? About average for a junior, I guess."

"Ness, there is _nothing _about you that's average, but aside from that I'd say you're probably right. I would have said seventeen too. Definitely old enough to drink."

"Drink?" says Nessie in some alarm. "Drink what?"

"Nessie, I need to tell you the facts of life, and that is always easier with a couple beers under your belt. That's how my dad did it, and I was even younger than you."

"What do you mean, 'facts of life'? I'm not a moron, Jake. I already know where babies come from. Hint: it's not storks." Jake laughs at this but turns serious again quickly.

"I don't mean about that stuff. That stuff you'd figure out anyway. We need to talk about relationships."

"What about them?" Nessie truly in the dark right now.

"I don't think your parents are in a position to explain this to you, because god bless 'em both but they are seriously co-dependent. But Nessie-" Jake glances over at her from the driver's seat before looking back at the road. "Jealous boyfriends are not okay. No guy ever has the right to make you feel like you can't be totally, one-hundred percent yourself."

"Ohh," says Nessie, cottoning on at last. He wants to talk about Kevin. "Why not? My mom says I should get used to jealousy because I'm pretty."

"She would say that," mutters Jake. "Ness, I'm sorry to have to do this, but you're mom's an idiot when it comes to relationships."

"Hey now," says Nessie heatedly. "That's not-"

"I'm sorry, but it's true," he says. "She can be excused for a lot of that. Now that I have some perspective, I can see that she and Edward really do deserve each other. They both think everything is so serious; maybe it's a good thing she's with someone like her, so things stay balanced. And I'm not gonna say I have a perfect track record. I was even dumber than Bella when I was a teenager, and to the day I die I'll be ashamed of some of the shit I did then. But the plus side is that now I know how to talk to you about how to avoid people like me. Or at least, people like I used to be."

"Jake," says Nessie quietly, "I'm sure that's not true."

Jake pulls off onto a dirt track that winds into a good-sized chunk of national reserve. He doesn't say anything for ten minutes and more. He pulls the car into a clearing and then starts pulling stuff out of the trunk: a cooler, a blanket, a basket filled with what smells like various meat products.

"Have a seat, Ness," he says. Nessie plants herself. Jake opens the cooler and pulls out two cans of beer. He tosses one to her and opens the other himself. "Cheers," he says, and they knock cans. Nessie takes a tentative sip. It tastes like fizzy Marmite. Not necessarily bad, but she can't figure out why anyone would drink a whole one.

"Okay," says Jake. "Here's the deal. It doesn't matter how pretty you are, or how smart you are, or how generally wonderful you are. If a guy you're dating wants you to behave like someone else so that he won't feel threatened, you dump his ass."

"That's awfully abrupt," says Nessie, raising one eyebrow.

"Sorry, Ness," says Jake, "but I don't know how else to put it. Does Kevin know you're here with me right now?"

"Where's 'here', anyway?" she asks, looking around. Jake shrugs and takes another pull of his beer. "Well, yes, he does. Or at least, he knows I'm with you."

"And what does he think about that?" asks Jake. "Is he okay with it?"

"Well...not really," Nessie admits. "He doesn't like you."

"Why not?"

Okay, this is embarrassing. Nessie knows why Kevin doesn't like Jake, and she knows Jake knows why Kevin doesn't like him. Does she really have to say it?

"He just...doesn't."

"Ness, please," says Jake. "Does he really not trust you with another guy? I mean, we've been best friends since forever. If there is one person you are safe as kittens with, it's me."

"I don't think he's worried you're going to hurt me," says Nessie awkwardly. "It's more..." She trails off uncertainly.

"He's worried because you are a young woman and I am, as far as he knows, a guy, and he assumes that one or both of us has skeezy intentions."

"Skeezy?" Nessie isn't skeezy! "Who's skeezy?"

"You know what I mean."

"Well," says Nessie grudgingly, "He doesn't like you because you're so, you know, tall and fit and like...you know, good-looking." She mumbles this last part. She is sure her face is on fire. She'd have to be _blind_ not to notice that Jake is, by every standard that counts, a looker. But she's worried that saying it will make him think she's like, _thinking _about him like that. Isn't it one of the million unbreakable rules of teenagehood that you aren't supposed to tell someone of the opposite sex that they are attractive? Or did she get that part wrong? Stupid humans with their stupid social rules.

But Jake doesn't even seem to notice her discomfort. "So he doesn't trust you not to ditch him for someone else."

"Well, I'm not going to!" exclaims Nessie. "He shouldn't even worry about it!"

"No, he shouldn't," agrees Jake. "But he does, because he's possessive. Take it from me, Ness, you can do better than some possessive guy who is too sensitive for you to dump."

Nessie scowls into her beer and then takes an extra-long sip while she thinks. It bugs the hell out of her that Jake is talking about Kevin like he knows him, but she has an uneasy suspicion that Jake _does_ know Kevin. After all, doesn't Nessie tell him everything about her life, every single night? And he's not wrong. Kevin _does_get possessive. He only ever wants her to talk to ugly guys or other girls.

"So, what makes you the expert?" she asks Jake a trifle aggressively. "Why do you know so much about it?"

Jake leans back on his elbows and looks up at the sky, which is almost even sunny today. "I used to be such an asshole," he says, not looking at Nessie. "I thought that just because I wanted something I was entitled to it. And I was really territorial. Trust me, Ness, I know the warning signs. I think I was just so testosterone-y right after I started phasing that everything felt life or death. It's leveled off since then, but I can remember what it felt like. I can sympathize with Kevin, I really can. You're a completely amazing girl and he'd have to be insane not to want to hang on to you. But he doesn't get to dictate who you're friends with."

"So, what, are you dictating that I should break up with him?" asks Nessie, sipping away at her beer.

"Not at all," says Jake deferentially. "I'm not here to tell you what to do. But I don't think anyone else is likely to tell you this, so I have to. You deserve to be happy. And you can't live only to make your boyfriend happy. Being nice is one thing, but you don't owe him your freedom. I just...I just want you to think about it, okay?"

Nessie tries to take another sip of her beer and is surprised to notice it's all gone. She blinks at it for a moment, then shrugs and reaches out for another one. Jake is still looking at the sky.

"What if I did want to break up with Kevin?" Nessie says cautiously. "I'm not saying I do, but...well, what if I did? How could I do it so I wouldn't hurt his feelings?"

Now Jake looks at her, if only to give her a disbelieving grin. "Ness, you're gonna break his heart. That's what breakups do. He'll get over it."

"Okay," says Ness. She is feeling suddenly very free and light. Is it because she's finally facing her desire to cut ties with Mother Hen Kevin? Or is it the beer? "So how do I do it? Assuming I want to."

"Oh, god, I don't know...you just tell him you don't want to go out anymore. If I know anything about this guy, he's going to try to convince you not to dump him, but you should stick to your guns. If you do decide to break up. Which you don't have to. It's your choice."

"Well, what do I say?" The beer must have something to do with it, because she even hesitantly asks, "Can I...can I practice on you?"

Jake looks at her, finishes off his beer, and stands up. He gives her a hand and they stand a few feet apart. "Okay," he says. "Go ahead."

"Um, Kevin," says Nessie. "I think we should break up."

"I think we shouldn't," says Jake.

"Well...why not?"

"Because we've been going out for months! You can't just dump me after all we've been through!" Jake wrings his hands theatrically.

"What?" Boy, Jake is taking this role-playing thing seriously. If he didn't have a twinkle in his eye she would think he was serious.

"It's someone else, isn't it? You've met someone."

"No I haven't!" exclaims Nessie. "I just...don't want to date you anymore. That's all."

"Yoooouuuu doooooon't looooove meeeeee!" cries Jake, burying his face in his hands and pretending to sob. "Hoowwww can you doooo this to meeee?"

"We can...we can still be friends," says Nessie desperately. Jake's heads snaps up.

"Ooh," he says in his normal voice, "don't say that. That only makes it worse."

"Why?"

"Because he'll think he can win you back. And even if he doesn't, it's really hard to just go back to being friends. Just tell him you've made up your mind."

"Kevin," says Nessie gravely, "I've made up my mind."

Jake fist-bumps her, and then they both sit back down and talk about other things for a while. When the sun gets low, they pack up the Rabbit and Jake drives Nessie home. She gives him a big hug and goes inside. Then she spends two hours on the phone reassuring her boyfriend that nothing happened, or has ever happened, or will ever happen between her and Jake.

Jake was right: she is tired of explaining her actions to her bossy boyfriend. And so the next day, she breaks up with Kevin.


	11. Boyfriends, Girlfriends, Proms

**Hey all! To celebrate New Year's Day and the end of what was, for me, a pretty shit year, here is a double-length chapter! I hope you enjoy.**

* * *

Jake was right: Kevin doesn't take the breakup well. But Nessie is surprised to find that aside from feeling sorry for him and sort of bored now that she has no one to make out with, life goes on as usual. She ends up spending a lot more time with Will and Lizzie. Over the summer, Will hit a growth spurt and his skin cleared up and suddenly he's actually really cute, in sort of a red-headed mop-toppish way.

About three weeks after she breaks up with Kevin, Will invites her over to his house for pizza and movies.

"I always liked _Hot Fuzz_," says Nessie as the credits are rolling. "And _Shaun of the Dead_. I still really wanna see _Spaced_."

"Hey, I have _Spaced _on Blu-Ray!" says Will excitedly. "Maybe you can come watch it this weekend!"

"That would be awesome!" agrees Nessie. "Does Lizzie want to see it too?"

"Dunno," says Will carelessly. "I don't think she's into Edgar Wright stuff as much. Hey, I also have this really cool series of shorts called _Look Around You_, he worked on those. They're like, fake-science documentaries."

"Sounds good!" says Nessie, standing up and stretching. "I have to go take a pee break. Be right back."

They get through half of _Look Around You_. Nessie sinks lower and lower into the couch cushions, and Will sinks closer and closer to her until they are practically in each other's laps. And then, so naturally that Nessie doesn't even think to question it, Will twines his fingers loosely through hers. His hands are nice and soft—cool, compared to Jake's and warm compared to her family. His thumb traces circles against her palm.

"Are you really upset about breaking up with Kevin?" he asks her, looking down at their hands. It is sort of an unexpected question, and sort of not.

"No," says Nessie honestly. "We weren't really that serious, so..."

"Huh," says Will. "He sure thought you were."

"I didn't know that," says Nessie, which isn't completely true. Why would he have been so dictatorial toward her if he didn't feel strongly? "Anyway, what does it matter?"

"It doesn't," Will assures her quickly. "I just wanted to know if it was bugging you. Because I...well, actually, Nessie, I really like you. Like, a lot."

"You do?" Wow, she didn't see that coming, but it makes sense in a way. And she likes Will, too. He is uber-cute these days, and he's always been so nice to her. "Well, I...like you too," she says shyly.

"Can I...kiss you?" Will asks.

"I'm gonna taste like Diet Coke and Doritos," warns Nessie.

"Me too," says Will, smiling. Then he leans forward and presses his lips softly to hers. Nessie kisses him back, and she pulls her hands away from him because she's so distracted by kissing that she's worried she'll slip him a vision by accident. That would be awkward. It's impossible to really _let go_, kissing a human. There's so much she has to hide.

"Well," says Nessie several minutes later. "Does this mean...are we going out now?" She mentally cringes at how clueless she is. She's a high schooler, and she fits in much better now than she used to, but she still feels removed from all the things that are normal to teenagers. It's probably because of her family. Or maybe it's because she really is only five and a half. Maybe she's just weird. But Will would never judge her.

"If you want," he says. "I'd really like that. I've had a crush on you for a while, actually."

"Oh!" says Nessie. "I didn't realize that." Rosalie was right: Nessie is terribly unobservant. She doesn't even notice the things that are under her very nose.

* * *

Will is far from possessive or jealous. Even Jake likes him, the few times they meet.

"He seems like a good kid," says Jake over the phone one night.

"He is," says Nessie happily. She is still coming down from her most recent makeout session. Kissing Will is awesome! Different from Kevin, of course. Will is a lot less demanding, too; everything with Will is so easy and uncomplicated. "He was the first person at school to make friends with me, you know."

"I remember," says Jake. "I'm really happy for you. Man, I remember what all that lovey stuff that used to be like. It's pretty great. Way to go." _Used to be? _That sounds almost sad. Nessie sits up and stares out her window into the darkness.

"Hey, Jake?" she says slowly. "When's the last time you had a girlfriend?"

"Wow," Jake says. "Um...god, at least since I was fourteen. But I mean, it wasn't serious. It was like, this summer thing."

"I didn't know that," says Nessie softly. "How come you don't date now? You're really cool and stuff. I know you could date if you wanted to."

"Well," says Jake, "I guess I was preoccuppied. I didn't want to have to decide between having a girlfriend and being there for you."

"But we hardly ever see each other anyway. There's no reason you couldn't still have a girlfriend. Or..." a thought occurs to Nessie. "A boyfriend? If you're into that?"

"Um, no," says Jake, laughing. "Come on, Ness, you really think there's a chance I'm gay?"

"Well, no," says Nessie, her cheeks reddening. "It's just, I never hear you talking about girls. It makes me sad! I get to have a normal life, and you're stuck with all that pack stuff and you don't even get to, you know...be all canoodly."

"'Canoodly'?" Jake echoes, and she can hear the grin in his voice. "To be honest, I wouldn't want to upset you."

"Why would that upset me? You shouldn't worry about that," says Nessie very firmly. "I feel so selfish, now! Like, I take up all your extra time on the phone, and you don't get anything out of it!"

"I get plenty out of it," protests Jake. "You know I love talking to you, even if I can't see you."

"Yeah," says Nessie. "Hey, Jake? If I told you that I would be happy for you to a girlfriend, would that make any difference?"

"It might," says Jake thoughtfully.

"I just don't like the idea that your life has to be limited because of the wolf stuff. It's not right!"

"Well, actually," says Jake with barely-suppressed excitement, "guess what?"

"What?"

"This month will mark the official five-year anniversary since we've last had a leech. We'll be able to dial back the wolf stuff a ton. I'll be able to focus on school more! And I'll be able to visit you way more often, too. Maybe even every weekend!"

"Oh my god, Jake, that's amazing! Plus, you'll have time to get a girlfriend!" Nessie doesn't know why she's so fixated on this idea. It just feels terribly unfair that she gets to have as many boyfriends as she wants and Jake is stuck in Forks all alone, doing boring grown-up stuff. He deserves to have a little fun, too.

"You really wouldn't mind if I started dating?" asks Jake suspiciously.

"Nope!" answers Nessie. "I'd be happy for you!"

"Well, it _has_ been kind of a long dry spell," says Jake with exaggerated reluctance. Nessie giggles. If Jake gets a girlfriend, they can go on double-dates and stuff! It'll be so fun!

"I'll think about it," says Jake. "It's been a long time since my life was normal enough for something like that. I guess it would be kind of nice to just feel like a regular guy for a change."

"I think so, too," says Nessie, glowing. "Just make sure she's as awesome as you are. Well, okay, that would be impossible. But make sure she's _almost_ as awesome as you are."

"Right on," says Jake.

* * *

The minute the wolves hit the five-year mark, everyone but Jake, Quil, Seth and Leah stop patrolling. Quil, of course, volunteered to keep phasing so he can stay young for Claire, although not because he's waiting for her to become romantically viable. In fact, Quil has a long-term girlfriend, one who both adores and is idolized by Claire. It's more about not wanting to squander a single year. After all, men already tend to die younger than women. As morbid as it is, Nessie can understand. If she had to face the possibility of Jake dying before her, perhaps by several _years_—well, she'd do almost anything to avoid that.

To celebrate their new freedom, the wolves all have a huge bonfire at the beach, and Nessie tags along. She sleeps over at Emily and Sam's house, and the next morning Jake shows up before she's even awake.

"Rise and shine!" he sings into her ear, cutting off her dream—not that she minds. Jake is better than any old dream. "I'm taking you to Port Angeles for breakfast!"

"That's a little far for breakfast," points out Nessie, yawning and stretching.

"Well, it's a special occasion!" he says."We're gonna spend the whole day there! Or maybe we'll go all the way to Seattle! Or maybe we'll…I don't know, we can do anything! I don't have to patrol for three more days! It's been _forever_ since I've had three days off!" His good mood is infectious, and soon Nessie is giggling right back. She yanks a brush through her hair and then wads it up in a low chignon. She brushes her teeth with a spare toothbrush in Sam and Emily's bathroom, throws on the spare dress she brought, and hops in the Rabbit with Jake.

"It's so nice to see you this happy," Nessie says, settling back and looking over at her best friend. His fingers are tapping out the beat of the song on the radio and his head is bobbing along. He has a perma-grin. Jake with a perma-grin is too wonderful; Nessie is almost positive that Jake's perma-grin could cure tuberculosis.

"I'm thinking about letting my hair grow back in," says Jake.

"You're still going to be phasing though, aren't you?" asks Nessie nervously. If he doesn't phase, how can he ward off old age and stay with her?

"Of course I am!" he says, reaching out to punch her jokingly in the arm. "And it's not like the length of my fur is directly related to the length of my hair, although if I grow my hair out my wolf fur will be sort of unmanageable. But that's only if I plan on fighting! If there are no leeches around, I can just phase every now and then and just like, run around the rez, you know? It wouldn't matter how poofy my fur gets!"

"Well," says Nessie, "I for one would kill to see you with long hair. I've only seen pictures, but it was a sight for sore eyes, I'll give you that."

"I don't know," says Jake, "I guess maybe I feel like I can…sort of reclaim my life, you know? For six years now it's been nothing but leeches and wolves and taking orders and giving orders. I just want to be normal again. And a part of that…well…" He looks at Nessie out of the corner of his eye.

"Yes?" prompts Nessie.

"Well, you remember that conversation we were having a few weeks ago? About how I haven't had a girlfriend since before the wolf stuff started up?"

Of course she remembers. Her father read about it in her mind. He almost never reads her mind when he can help it, but according to him she was "shouting it at him". Then he told her mother, and both of them lectured her for an hour about how Jake should only ever have eyes for her. Contrary to their wishes, this only cemented her desire to see Jake happily paired off: after all,_she's_ not gonna date him. He's Jake! Jake is wonderful and perfect and awesome and funny and cool and understanding and interesting, but he's also…well, he's _Jake_. Jakes are not for dating, not if you're a Nessie. And it is _so totally unfair_ that he should stay single forever just because of her. It would be all her fault! And making out is so fun! How can she deprive him of that?

"Yeah, I remember," says Nessie.

"Well, I sort of…met someone," he says carefully.

"Ooh, really?" asks Nessie. "Who is she? Is it a girl from the rez?"

"It's a girl from one of my classes. Actually, it's Mandy. From my history class. Remember? I've told you about her."

"Yeah, totally," says Nessie. "Are you going out?"

"Well, I was thinking of asking her out. I wanted to run it by you first, though." Oh, that makes Nessie feel uncomfortable. He shouldn't have to _run it by_ anyone, least of all her. Wasn't Jake the one who told her that relationships like that are unhealthy?

"Well," she says, "you don't have to do that. If you like her, you should ask her out. And you don't need my permission or anything."

"Thanks," says Jake. Nessie thinks he's teasing her, but when she looks at his face she realizes he's completely serious. "I really mean it," he says. "I see the way Emily and Sam are…and my sister and Paul…and I just. Wow. I got the good one." Nessie laughs. "I mean it!" he says. "You're the most generous person I've ever met, Ness. You want me to be happy, and you don't want me at your beck and call. You really want me to be myself. Can you understand how amazing that is for me? After so many years of having to be what other people want me to be?"

Nessie fiddles with a loose thread in her seat and wraps herself up in the scent of Jake and Rabbit.

"I never expected an imprint to feel like this," he goes on. "Everyone says an imprinted wolf will be whatever his imprint needs him to be, and that always sounded like bullshit to me. Like I would just be forced to turn into whatever you want. And maybe it is like that for other people, but not for us. You've never made demands on me. It's just not who you are. Even if I didn't have the imprint, I would still want to be in your life. You just bring out the best parts of me. You make me so happy."

Nessie is silent. She doesn't want to speak and break the glorious feeling Jake's words give her. But she does reach one hand out and rest it against the nape of his neck and think, _Well, damn, Jake. I love you, too._

* * *

Two nights later, Jake informs Nessie over the phone that he's asked out Mandy and she's agreed to go on a date. This surprises Nessie not a whit, since Jake is the awesomest human being of all time, ever. Who in her right mind would say no to him?

Nessie doesn't meet Mandy until after midterms are done. Mandy and Jake are both twenty-one, and Nessie knows it won't be fun for them to hang around a couple of seventeen-year-olds, especially not if one of the seventeen-year-olds is actually six. But Mandy comes to the rez several times while Nessie is there, and it's actually pretty nice to have another female to talk to when she and Charlie are eating over at the Blacks'. Mandy is working toward certification in teaching high school science, which means she has a ton more school to get through. Nessie doesn't even know what to go to college for. Her dad wants her to consider attending a music conservatory, Juilliard at the very least although Curtis would be better, unless she wants to go abroad, which she can do now that Jake isn't so tied down to the rez. Her singing voice might actually be good enough for it, but she hasn't settled into anything yet.

"That's fine," Mandy assures her. "You have plenty of time. No one knows what they want to do till they at least get out of high school. Hell, even I'm not sure if I'm going to follow through on this teaching thing. I don't actually like kids very much."

"Kids?" says Nessie. "I thought you were going to teach high school."

"Well, same difference," says Mandy, laughing, but then she notices Nessie's hurt look. "I don't mean you, obviously. You're very mature for your age. I just mean _other_ teenagers."

"Huh," says Nessie. She watches Mandy and Jake together for a while. Mandy is very pretty. She has really smooth tan skin and a shiny light-brown bob and gray eyes, and she's constantly smiling. Jake has his arm around her now, and they look comfortable and relaxed. Nessie tilts her head to one side. It's weird to see Jake so familiar with someone who's not her. Not bad or anything—and Mandy _is_ really cool—but weird.

"Huh," she says again.

* * *

Nessie and Will plan to go to the junior prom together, of course. They're even nominated for prom king and queen, although so are Edward and Bella, _and_ Alice and Jasper, and a few other couples. But Will seems to take the nomination as a sign that he has to be totally romantic and get everything right, and then he gets Alice on his side, and soon Nessie is swept up in things too. They will share a limo to prom with Nessie's parents and aunt and uncle. Alice even goes so far as to buy Will a tux and get it tailored to fit him. He runs track, and he is quite nicely built, and Nessie is pleased to see how well he wears the penguin suit. Then Alice hustles him out of the way and takes Nessie dress-shopping in Vancouver.

Right now they are trying to decide between three very different, very expensive gowns. Beside Nessie is a deep burgundy silk sheath which skims her narrow frame and clings becomingly to her modest—but perky!—breasts. Underneath that is an eggplant-colored mass of chiffon with a gigantic skirt. Nessie looks in the mirror and smiles at Alice's reflection.

"I like this one best," she says. She is wearing a lovely blue silk gown with cap sleeves, an empire waist, and a split skirt overlay that is positively _dripping_ with beaded embroidery. Alice nods, beaming. The dress costs two thousand dollars, which isn't even pocket-change for the Cullens.

"I like it too," says Alice. "Now we need to figure out the shoe situation. This dress has a very Edwardian vibe—oh, don't give me that look, I meant the period, not your father—and I think it would be a serious misstep to just stick you in any old strappy heels. But we don't want it to look costumey, either. I'm thinking vintage Dior pumps. And you'll have to wear silk stockings, of course, none of this Spanx foolishness. I know of an online boutique that sells gorgeous full-fashioned stockings. Oh, we'll have to get you a garter belt, too, to hold them up! And your hair, what are you going to do about your hair?"

Alice stands behind her niece and starts arranging her curls right there in the dressing room. "I'm seeing a sort of Pre-Raphaelite thing where it's swept back from your face but left mostly alone. This dress has a great neckline, though, would it be better if your hair went up?"

Nessie tunes out her aunt. Alice is tons of fun to shop with, but her enthusiasm for the subject leaves Nessie far behind. She's sure that whatever her aunt decides will be perfect.

* * *

"Nessie?"

"Will? Oh my god, you sound awful! What's wrong?" It is the morning of prom. School let out for the summer only yesterday, and Nessie's prom date sounds like he swallowed a cheese grater.

"I have strep," he croaks. "I think I picked it up over finals. I'm so sorry, babe, I can't go to prom."

"Oh," says Nessie quietly. This is _awful!_ Alice has everything planned to a T. And Nessie was really looking forward to seeing her parents let loose at school. This will make the first school dance they've ever graced with their presence, and they're only going because Alice threatened them with bodily harm if they skipped. And it's not like Nessie _cares_ about being prom queen or anything, but she _does_ care about seeing all her friends dressed up. "Well…that's…I'm so sorry, Will. How awful!"

"I think you should still go, though," he says. "You can go without me."

"Oh, Will," says Nessie half-heartedly, "I couldn't do that!"

"Please, Nessie?" says Will. "I'd feel like such shit if you couldn't even go just because I got sick."

"You don't want me to come make you some soup or something?"

"And get sick yourself? No thanks. You just go have fun, babe." Nessie doesn't point out that she is, as far as anyone can tell, physically incapable of illness. Will doesn't know anything about vampires and their weird immune systems.

"Well…are you sure?"

"Yeah," he says. "Hey, babe, I really have to hang up. I'm sorry. I just feel like such crap."

"Okay," says Nessie. "I love you. Get better!"

"Love you too," he says, and hangs up.

_Perfect_, thinks Nessie. She isn't mad at Will—it's not his fault he got sick—but prom won't be nearly as much fun without her date.

* * *

A little before the limo shows up to take Nessie and her family to prom, there is a knock on the door. Her makeup is finished (Alice outdid herself _again_) and her dress is buttoned and her silk stockings are hooked to her six-loop garter and her hair is almost done. She is in her room with Rosalie, having her hair organized, when she hears a familiar deep voice in the entrance hall.

"Hey!" shouts Rosalie at Nessie's vanishing form. "Come back, you're hair's not done!" But Nessie is already barreling down the stairs, her short silk train sweeping every step. And there he is, talking to her mom and dad in the foyer.

"Jake!" cries Nessie. "What are you doing here?"

"Will called me," he says, lighting up when he sees her. She leaps down the last six steps into his arms. He twirls her around and sets her gingerly on the marble floor. "Hey, you look nice!"

"Why did Will call you?" asks Nessie.

"Well, he said when he told you he couldn't come you sounded really upset, but you were too nice to say anything about it, and then he asked if I would be willing to take you instead so at least you don't have to show up alone."

"Aww," teases Nessie, "how sweet of you to take in poor little ole charity-case me!"

Jake punches her in the arm and she punches him right back.

"I couldn't find a tux last-minute," he says. "I have a suit that sort of fits…"

"No worries!" chimes Alice, appearing at the top of the steps and holding a garment bag. "Emmett says you can borrow one of his. It'll be a little short, but I can let out the sleeves and legs real quick before we go." Is it just Nessie or does Jake's face fall a fraction at the idea of wearing a vampire's tux? But Jake doesn't say anything about it.

"Be right back," he says, taking the garment bag and marching off to the bathroom to change. He reappears five minutes later, and the tux really _is_ too short for him, and it pulls across the shoulders, but with a little finagling Alice can probably make it work—

Then Nessie catches sight of Jake's expression. He looks like he's going to be ill. He might as well be wearing a hollowed-out tauntaun. He's gotten used to the smell of the Cullens over the years, but Nessie can imagine wearing a suit saturated with the scent all night—well, that can't feel good.

"How do I look?" asks Jake. Alice clucks over the amounts of exposed ankle and wrist he's showing, but Nessie holds out a hand to stop her aunt.

"You know what?" she says. "Never mind about the tux." Alice turns to her with a horrified expression and even Jake protests weakly. "No, I mean it!" she says. "There's no dress-code. Why don't you wear what you wore over here?"

Alice tries to cut in again, but at that moment the limo pulls up outside. She looks from Nessie to Jake, clearly torn.

"Alice," says Nessie, "you go ahead. Jake and I will come soon, okay? You planned everything perfectly. Go enjoy it! We'll take his car."

Nessie parents arrive to second Alice's protestations, but then Jasper appears and suddenly everyone feels much more easygoing.

"Well, okay," says Alice, walking out to the limo with her husband. "See you there!" she calls over her shoulder.

"See you in a few minutes, sweetie," says Bella, kissing her daughter on the forehead. She looks even lovelier than usual, all dolled up in midnight blue satin. Nessie watches her family climb into the limo and drive away.

"Okay," she says, turning back to Jake. "First things first. _You_ need to go change back into your street clothes."

"Are you sure?" asks Jake. "I can wear the tux. I won't complain. I just want you to enjoy your prom."

"I'll enjoy it more if we're _both_ having fun," says Nessie decisively. "Scoot!"

Jake concedes, and when he comes out of the bathroom again he is back in his normal clothes. Nessie looks him over seriously for a moment. He has made good on his promise to grow out his hair; already it swings around his ears, shiny and soft and inky-black. His dark blue jeans are clean—that's good. He's wearing leather work boots, but it could be worse; usually he doesn't even wear shoes. At least he put on a nice crisp white button-down; his tan skin is positively glowing in comparison. He looks really handsome. In fact, thinks Nessie as she looks down at herself, he makes her look out-of-place.

"Be back in a sec," she says, and then rushes off to her room.

She comes back down fifteen minutes later, and Jake does a double-take. Gone is the expensive gown. Instead, Nessie is now wearing a very mini lime-green Mod dress with long, fitted sleeves. In place of the silk stockings and Dior shoes are a pair of banana-yellow tights and turquoise leather boots that hit just below the knees.

It doesn't look anything like prom-wear. But even Alice can't complain, seeing as she bought Nessie the dress and the boots.

"Wow," says Jake. "You look fucking rad, Ness! Hey, what are those for?" He eyes the pair of heavy scissors Nessie swiped from Esme's sewing room.

"I want you to cut my hair," Nessie says. "Just chop it all off. I want a bob for my junior prom. You're growing your hair out, I'm hacking mine off!"

"Um, are you sure?" asks Jake nervously. "I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but hair takes a long time to grow back."

"I know," says Nessie, pressing the scissors into his large warm hand. "My mom's out of the house. I already tied my hair back and braided it; all you have to do is cut it off below the rubber band. Easy."

"Oo-kay," says Jake, following Nessie into the bathroom. He lifts the scissors and then pauses. "Last chance," he warns.

"Go for it," says Nessie.

And then he does. A heavy braid hits the bathroom floor with a _thud_. Jake pulls the rubber band from the nape of Nessie's neck and then scrabbles his warm fingers through her hair, messing it up. Nessie shakes her head as hard as she can and laughs gleefully at the lightness of it. She feels like her head might float away. Her curls corkscrew down to a blunt line at her jawbone. She parts it on the side and sticks a daisy in it from one of Esme's flower arrangements.

"How do I look?" she asks, twirling for Jake.

"You look pretty goddamn spectacular," says Jake, offering her his arm.

"You don't look too bad yourself," she says.

* * *

Nessie's relations are in an uproar when they see her short hair and her un-prom-like attire, and Alice immediately turns on Jake. But Nessie insists that it was all her choice, and eventually they settle down.

Nessie's classmates are understandably confused about who Jake is. He isn't Will, which earns Nessie her share of catty looks from people who don't realize Will is merely sick, and not being cuckolded. Jake is also clearly not a high school student, and only a handful of her friends have met him before. But being with him makes the evening perfect. He is a comically bad dancer for someone with such inhumanly good reflexes, and Nessie matches him, flailing about and doing all sorts of spins and kicks that clear a safety-zone around them on the dance floor. Nessie's dad has to step in and warn her not to dance any more aggressively than the humans around her, lest she reveal too much to their tender human eyes. Nessie grumbles a little, but gives in.

By the end of the evening, after Alice and Jasper have accepted their prom crowns, Nessie has to admit that this was the best prom she could have hoped for. Jake keeps reaching out to play with her hair. "It's so weird," he says, "seeing you with short hair. But I love it. I think it looks perfect."

"Yeah," jokes Nessie, "of course you think that. You cut it yourself!" From across the room Alice frowns at this statement. "Hey, Jake," says Nessie, "a bunch of us were going to go out for ice cream, but ice cream is for babies. Wanna go hang out? My parents suspended my curfew for tonight, I think they want the house to themselves. And they won't care what I do, as long as I stay with you."

Jake looks thoughtful. "Okay," he says. "I know where we can go."

* * *

**Where, Jake? Where? Actually, this isn't meant to be a cliffhanger (it would be a lame one anyway). But I had to cut it off here because the next bit is too long to fit into this chapter. Please forgive me. It's the new year!**


	12. Dirty Talk

Jake drives to a grocery store and picks up a couple six-packs of Mexican beer, which he loads into the cooler that lives in his trunk. Then he drives in what seems like an aimless direction, until Nessie realizes he's taking her to the same clearing where they talked about Kevin a year ago.

It's as warm a night as they ever get in this part of BC. Jake spreads a ratty blanket on the ground and plops the cooler on top. Nessie settles herself against Jake's bulky warmth and grabs a beer. They clink cans and take long sips and then look up at the stars for a while, drinking in silence.

"How's Mandy?" Nessie asks suddenly. "I hope she's not offended you had to come be my surrogate date for the evening."

"Not at all," says Jake. "She knows how it is with us. Besides, she really likes you. She thought it was a funny idea."

"Hmm," says Nessie. "Hey, Jake, can I ask you…well, it's a really personal question."

"Fire away."

"And you don't have to answer it if you don't want to." Nessie finishes her first beer and reaches for a second.

"Okay," agrees Jake. "If I don't want to answer it, I won't. What's up?"

"Well," says Nessie, taking a long sip to give her courage. "Have you ever…you know, had sex?"

Jake is quiet for a moment beside her, and she is mortally afraid she's upset him. "I'm sorry," she says hurriedly. "It's really none of my business…"

"No, it's okay," says Jake. "I don't mind talking about it with you. Um, yes, I've had sex."

"With Mandy?"

"Yeah, with Mandy," he says. "But also…remember how I told you I had a girlfriend when I was like, fourteen?"

"Yeah…?"

"Well, I did it with her a couple times."

"Seriously?" Nessie exclaims, sitting up and staring wide-eyed at Jake. He laughs and looks down at his beer. "That's so young!"

"Well, not really," he says. "Or, maybe. I don't know. It was a year after my mom died, and I still wasn't over it. I was just looking for someone to be close to, you know?" Nessie's heart breaks to think of a gangly, skinny young Jake, lonely and desperate to be loved. She knows his mother's death was hard on him, especially since it instantly shifted all responsibility for Billy onto his bony shoulders. "But it was pretty rotten for her," he adds. "Fourteen-year-old boys are shitty at that stuff."

"What was her name?" Nessie asks curiously.

"Hannah," says Jake. "Man, I haven't thought about her in ages. I think she went to college in Portland or something."

"Are you glad you did it?"

Jake looks at her, and even though it's dark they can see each other plainly. Hell, even with their eyes closed they'd see each other plainly. They've always been that way. "Yeah," he answers, "I am. She was a nice girl. And sex is fun. And there's no point regretting it, is there? It's done."

"Yeah," says Nessie. "I guess it is."

"Why do you ask?" Jake says, popping his third beer.

"Well," says Nessie, "I think I'm going to have sex with Will. Is it weird for me to tell you that?"

"Nothing you say to me can be weird," says Jake. "Think you're ready?"

"Yeah," she says sincerely, "I do. I really like him. And, you know. Well."

"I get it," Jake laughs. "Only natural."

"Well, I can't believe I'm saying this, but…well, is there anything I should know, going into it?"

"Um, you mean other than use a condom?"

"D'uh, we're gonna use a condom!" Nessie swats at Jake with her right hand. He laughs and ducks away, deflecting the blow and holding her wrist loosely in his long fingers. "I just mean…anything _else_."

"Hmmm," says Jake. "I need to drink more before I can answer that question."

"Cool," says Nessie. "Me too." They both pound down their second and third beers respectively, and reach for more.

"Okay," says Jake. "I think I'm inebriated enough to have this conversation. What exactly do you want to know?"

"Does it hurt? Okay, I know you're a guy and all, but like…ahh. I don't know what I'm saying."

"Well," says Jake, "Hannah and I were both virgins, and yes, it did hurt her. But not for long. Actually, I didn't hold out very long. Like I said: fourteen-year-old boys suck at sex. But she just popped a bunch of Tylenol and drank lots of water. And also, if I'd ever heard of foreplay back then it wouldn't have been as bad."

"Okay," says Nessie, "I know I'm about to sound like a total naïf, but…can you tell me more about foreplay?"

"Seriously?" Jake boggles at her in the darkness. Nessie blushes, but she's deadly serious. "Um, okay…wow," he says. "I seriously cannot believe we're talking about this. Haven't your aunts pretty much gotten that sewn up? Wait, I didn't mean sewn up…agh. I'm word-vomiting."

Nessie giggles. The beer is making her feel all uninhibited and goofy. She flings her arms up and stretches luxuriantly. "I can't talk to my mom about it," she says, "because ew. I would talk to my aunts or Grandmother about it, but I can't risk my dad reading their minds. He doesn't spend enough time with you to find it in your head. Plus I know you're really good at blocking him. C'mon, Jake, you're the only one I can go to about this!" She opens her eyes extra wide and does a fake pout. Jake gives in.

"Okay," he says. "Foreplay is…um, all the stuff that makes sex not boring and lame for the woman."

"I know that," says Nessie. "Like what? I need specifics! Otherwise how will I get it right?"

"Oh my god," says Jake. "Um, you'll figure it out?"

"Jake!"

"Okay, okay!" he says, holding his hands up in surrender. "Like oral. He could go down on you. That would count as foreplay."

"Alright," says Nessie, "so what does that entail?"

"Holy Christ," mutters Jake. "Your dad will seriously disembowel me if he ever finds out I am corrupting you with this information, Ness."

"I'm good at keeping him out of my head," says Nessie, "he's afraid of me because I'm a teenage girl. Besides, are you admitting my dad would beat you in a fair fight? Who are you and what have you done with my Jake?"

"Okay!" says Jake. "Oral. Foreplay. Agh."

"Yes," says Nessie patiently, "What about it?"

Jake rolls his eyes and grabs another beer. "Well," he says, "Oral is pretty good for everyone involved. It's fun for the guy, and it's really really sexy. And obviously, done right, it's great for the girl. And it's good for like, getting everything all lubey down there, in case you want to have regular sex after."

"It's fun for the guy?" asks Nessie, surprised.

"Hell yes!" squeaks Jake. "It's really hot, actually. Puss—um, vaginas taste good. Oh my god I'm going to hell for even talking about this to you."

"Yeah, yeah," says Nessie distractedly, "whatever. So, oral is good. How do you do it?"

"Um…you're not going to have to perform oral on yourself, Ness," he says. "If and when Will goes down on you, just…tell him what he's doing right. If something feels good, let him know. It'll make him feel good about himself, and he'll be able to pinpoint what you like."

"Good idea," says Nessie, filing that away. "What else?"

"Fingering," says Jake. "That's good too."

"It sounds complicated," says Nessie, thinking of the definition of "fingering" that applies to string instruments.

"It can be," admits Jake. "Vaginas are a lot more complicated than dicks. Or at least, that's how it seems to me, but maybe I only think that because I don't have one. A vagina, I mean. I _do_ have a—agh! Shut up, Jake!"

"How does one…finger?"

"Well, just have him do whatever you do when you jerk off," says Jake. "If he can't figure it out right away, let him watch you for a while. That's always fun. And instructive. Good way to show him what you like."

"Um…" says Nessie, blushing in the darkness.

"Oh, no way!" exclaims Jake, realization dawning on his face.

"Ah…" she says, looking intently at the Little Dipper.

"Dude, you're kidding!" says Jake. "Really?"

"Excuse me for living!" says Nessie. "I just…never got around to it!"

"You are really telling me you've never jerked it?"

"Is that wrong?"

"Nothing's _wrong_," says Jake kindly, and he reaches out to twist one of her curls around his forefinger. "But you might find it useful to get a handle on what you like before you dive in, you know? Or not. It's up to you."

"So…what, I just like, take a bath and think about Han Solo?"

Jake does a double-take. "Dude," he says, giggling like a little boy, "_Han Solo?_"

"Or whoever!" she adds defensively.

Jake shakes his head, laughing. "Well," he says, "Maybe not in the bathtub. It'll rinse away all your natural…um…_slipperiness_."

"Oh," says Nessie. "See, this is why I need you. I didn't know all this stuff! You're making me feel a lot better, you know."

"Glad I can help," says Jake.

"Okay," says Nessie, "so I have to masturbate, and then I have to…hey, wait!" Jake looks at her, eyebrows raised. "Am I gonna have to give him a blow job and stuff?"

At this Jake totally loses it. He curls up and rolls around on the ground laughing. When he finally comes up for air, Nessie is scowling at him, but her lips are twitching. It's amazing, Jake really is making her feel better about all this! If having sex is half as easy and fun as _talking_ about it, she's in the clear!

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do," he says at last. "But yes, most guys do like blow jobs. If you ever decide to offer."

"Do you?"

"Well…" Jake crumples his beer can. "Yes," he says. "I do. They're very…nice."

"Okay," says Nessie, "so how do I give a good one?"

"I…really can't see my way clear to answering that, Ness," he says. "If I tell you how to give a blow job, I will _definitely_ go to hell."

"Why?" says Nessie obstinately. "What's wrong with blow jobs?"

"Nothing," says Jake. "But I can't like…get all graphic. It would probably gross you out, anyway."

"Blow jobs are gross?"

"No!" says Jake hurriedly. Then, "…Well, maybe. I've never given one, myself. But going down on a girl isn't gross at all, so if I had to guess I would say that going down on a guy probably isn't any grosser than that. I'm just saying that hearing _me_ talking about it will gross you out."

"Not at all," says Nessie brightly. "You're the only one I _can_ talk to about it. You're my best friend! And none of my human girl friends have had sex yet. I just want to be prepared."

"Well, fuck. Okay. Um, you just sort of…make out with the guy's cock until he like…warns you…and then you get out of the way."

"Jacob Black," says Nessie sternly, hiccupping a little, "that is _not helpful_. Come onnn! Which part do you blow on?"

"You don't actually blow on anything," says Jake. "I don't know why they call them that. You just kind of like, suck on it."

"Like a popsicle!" exclaims Nessie.

"Yes," says Jake in relief. "Exactly like that. Now can we please stop talking about blow jobs? I'd like to salvage whichever bits of my evil lecherous soul have survived the conversation so far."

"Mm hmm!" says Nessie. "On to the main intercourse!" She giggles madly at her own joke. Jake snorts.

"That's pretty basic," he says. "That's actually the most intuitive part. You know, Ness, I would hate for you to get the idea that I'm some sort of expert on this. Honestly, most of what I know I only found out through pack-mind."

"What? …Oh," she says wrinkling her nose. "Okay, that _is_ gross."

"I know," says Jake, nodding. "Ew. But helpful!"

"I wish I had pack-mind," pouts Nessie.

"No you don't. It's lame. I'd rather be clueless about sex than have to share every single thought about it. Speaking of which, you're _sure_ you can keep your dad from reading about this in your head and murdering me for polluting your innocent young mind?"

Nessie nods. Then she stands up and stretches. The world stays sitting down and the stars go all swirly. She feels herself beginning to fall over, but Jake is on his feet in a second, steadying her with warm hands around her ribcage. "You all right, Nesslie?" he asks in concern. Nessie nods.

"This is fun!" she says. "I love talking to you about this, Jake. Sex is really scary! But you make it sound less scary."

"I'm glad," he says. "You know, if you really like Will—"

"I do," she says emphatically. "I really do!" She leans in conspiratorially. "I maybe even love him, sort of," she whispers, then puts a finger to her lips and giggles. "Ssh!"

"Good," says Jake. "And he loves you back. I can tell. When you're with someone you love, it won't be scary. It'll be…exciting, and fun, and it should just be one awesome thing you get to do together. It's not the end-all be-all of existence though, you know? It's just another thing people do. Like…doing the dishes without being asked. Except cool."

"Do you love Mandy?"

"Well…"

Nessie gasps. "Jacob Black!" she scolds. "Are you telling me you've had sex with someone you don't even love?"

Jake shrugs. "So?" he says. "I mean, I really, really like Mandy. She's really cool, and really funny, and really attractive. And I do love her…in a way. It's not the same way I love you, or the same way Sam loves Emily—but hey, we're both adults. It's okay to mess around for the hell of it."

"She loves you," says Nessie.

"I don't think so," says Jake. "She hasn't said anything about it."

"Well, she does," insists Nessie. "No one wouldn't love you. You're impossible not to love."

"Aww, shucks," says Jake with mock bashfulness. "You're just saying that because you're stuck with me."

"Psh," says Nessie, twirling and twirling through the moonlit field till she's dizzy. She starts to fall over again, and again Jake has steadying hands around her waist before she can topple. "If Mandy were falling, you'd catch her before she hit the ground," says Nessie. "That's why she loves you."

"Maybe," says Jake. Nessie yawns hugely and her eyelids suddenly feel very heavy, but Jake lifts her easily and carries her back to the Rabbit. He lays her gently in the backseat, covers her with the blanket, and then stretches out in the front seat to sleep.

They wake with the sun, and Nessie is a little dehydrated but otherwise fine. She sees that she missed four calls from her father, but she can't go home yet because she still smells like beer. She holds the phone up to show Jake, and he must interpret her panicked look correctly because he says, "Why don't you tell them I drove you back to Forks with me and you forgot to call? You were planning on coming down this weekend anyway, right?"

So Nessie does this, and the worst she has to deal with is a short lecture from her dad on always letting him know where she is. Jake drives them down to Forks, and they joke around the whole way there. Jake gives her a long, warm hug before discharging her into Grandpa Charlie's care. Then he shoots her one last wicked grin and takes off in the Rabbit.

* * *

**Thanks for reading, friends. From here on out, expect to see a lot more Jake and Nessie scenes, and conversations of a similarly personal nature. Our girl is growing up, after all! Leave me a review if you're into it, or if you hate me for any of a vast number of possible reasons most likely revolving around Jake's virginity or lack thereof. (Sorry, guys, I just really hate writing virgin sex. If it's gonna be accurate it has to be really disappointing, and who wants to read that?) Also, I try to respond to every review I get, but since I can't respond to reviews by guests, I'll say it here: thanks for your thoughts, guests! Especially my sweet hearted lurkers ^_^**

**Also, does anyone else have a problem copying chapters into the doc manager? It always copies them bold and strips all teh italics away, and I have to go through and re-italicize by hand, and y'all, I use a _lot_ of italics. See?**


	13. Taking Off

Nessie turns six on the last warm day in September, and her family throws her the bitchinest party ever. All her school friends are there. Jake and Mandy and Charlie and Sue and Emily and Sam and everyone else shows up. They are pretending Nessie is turning eighteen, which is how old she looks, and for her birthday her dad buys her a BMW M3 hard-top convertible in a splendid shade of mustard yellow. The interior is all buttery-soft Moroccan leather.

"This isn't a normal gift for an eighteen-year-old, Dad!" she pretends to scold. But she doesn't pretend very hard; this present signifies freedom, something her dad has only ever given her in fits and starts before. And the car is _way_ awesome.

A few weeks later, she and Will have sex for the first time. It is awkward and ungainly, and Will doesn't hold out very long, but Nessie doesn't mind so much because she's still never had an orgasm and she doesn't know what she's supposed to be waiting for. Will gets better at it, but (to Nessie's intense disappointment) he shows less than no interest in going down on her. It's a pity, because Jake made it sound really great. But Will is pretty much devoted to a routine of five minutes making out, five minutes of fingers, and five minutes of actual screwing. It's fun only because it's novel. Nessie is plenty horny, too, but she has no idea where to channel it all.

She tries masturbating, but in only the most aimless and desultory way, and it yields very little in the way of results. She has sex dreams from which she wakes with a tightly throbbing pulse between her legs, but she doesn't know what to do with it. All in all, becoming sexually active generally makes her feel _more_ horny and frustrated, not less.

Not that she has many chances to exercise her sexual activation. She knows Will would be dead meat if her dad found out, and so they only ever have sex when her family is out hunting for a weekend, and they only do it at Will's house lest any traces of scent betray their secret. When all is said and done, Nessie doesn't understand what the appeal is meant to be, other than that it's sort of nice to cuddle afterward.

* * *

Over Christmas break, Nessie and her family pay a visit to Zafrina, Senna and Kachiri in Brazil. Nessie loves seeing Zafrina again, and she really loves playing around with their visions together. Zafrina's visions can be transmitted at a distance, but Nessie's can convey more to the senses. If she's focusing very hard, she can transmit scent along with sight and sound.

Jake decides not to accompany them, and Nessie doesn't blame him. It's one thing to expect him to put up with human-drinkers as a means of saving Nessie's life; it's something else entirely to expect him to start paying social calls on human-drinkers in their own territory. But Nessie calls him every day, and there is very little disruption to their conversations.

She doesn't call Will every day; what on earth would they have to talk about?

* * *

Nessie loads up on easy courses her last semester of high school, and pulls an A out of every one. She still has no clue which college she wants to attend; she applies to about two dozen and is accepted at all but one, but what will she do when she picks a college? Singing? History? Literature? She agonizes over it to Jake every night on the phone.

"The worst of it is," she confesses, "the only places I'm seriously considering are all really sunny. I know my family has lived sunny places before, or at least less cloudy than Forks and Sooke, but I really want to go to UCLA. They'd never be able to go outside there."

"Well," says Jake cautiously, "is there any particular reason you have to go where your parents go? Plenty of people move away from their folks for college."

"I guess that's true," says Nessie. "But be honest: can you really see my mom and dad just setting me loose in the wild? They'd have conniptions if they thought I was even considering it!"

"Edward probably has an inkling," says Jake thoughtfully. "And I think your mom might be supportive, if you approached her the right way. Remember, she's from Arizona. She loves the sun."

"That's not all, though," says Nessie. "What about you? LA is so far from Forks! I only see you on weekends as it is! And if I'm trying to keep up with a full course load, I won't be able to just ditch my life every weekend. How will we see each other?"

"That's a conundrum," says Jake. "But I'm sure there's a way. I think for right now you shouldn't worry about me too much. I want you to go where you want to go. And UCLA is a great school. Do you know what you want to study, yet?"

"History," sasy Nessie. "I think. Maybe music history. Or music history with a minor in anthropology. Or some other combination of the three."

"Well, maybe if you have a game plan your dad'll listen to reason. Make a list of every reason you want to go to UCLA, and every pro and con you can think of, and maybe bring it up with Carlisle or Esme first, just to get someone on your side."

"But what about you, Jake?" she asks softly. "I don't know if I can go whole months without seeing you. I mean, one month, sure, if it's for a good reason. But for four years in a row?"

"Well," says Jake, "I get my bachelor's degree this spring. I haven't decided yet what I'm going to do after that, but I don't have to stay with the tribe any more. Quil has really stepped up lately; he might be open to taking over the packs if I decide to leave town. I could go to graduate school. Or get a job. Becca and Rachel took off when they were even younger than I am now."

"But I couldn't ask you to abandon your family and your whole tribe!"

"Like I said," says Jake. "Let me worry about that. You didn't grow up on the rez. You have no idea how tiny this place feels after a while. Besides, I'm motherfuckin' immortal. It's not like I can't come back later."

"Good point," says Nessie. Knowing that Jake is figuring it out too takes a load off her mind.

Jake starts talking about Amy, who followed Melissa, who followed Ashley, who followed Mandy. Nessie is a little worried about how quickly Jake runs through girlfriends. Well, he's young, just pushing twenty-two. Maybe it's normal for him not to be too serious yet. But she worries that it's partly her fault. Is she too clingy? Does she get in the way? Maybe the imprint is messing up his chances with otherwise wonderful girls. It just doesn't seem fair to him. Even Quil has a long-term girlfriend, and he and Claire and the girlfriend are practically already a family unit. Why shouldn't Jake have happiness like that?

But of course, every time he breaks up with his latest girlfriend she stews about it until he notices. And all Jake will say is, "Don't worry, Ness, it's not your fault. My heart just wasn't in it."

* * *

"Dad, I want to go to UCLA." Nessie takes a deep breath. "Dad, I think UCLA is the school for me." She smoothes her dress, which is a very collegiate-looking gray wool affair. She hopes it will make her appear mature and responsible. "Dad, you know how you want me to follow my dreams and leave my family behind and live on my own and totally abandon you all and ruin everything?" She puts her hands over her face so she can't see herself looking out of the mirror. This is a disaster. Carlisle and Esme have been only semi-helpful, saying that they want her to be happy but that it's her father's decision and that they'll have to stand by him.

"Dad," she says, looking up from her hands.

"You want to go to UCLA," says Edward from the doorway to her bedroom. Nessie jumps. In her nervousness, she didn't even hear him open the door.

"Ah…" says Nessie. "You see, Dad, it's just that UCLA is a really, really good school! And they have an amazing music history program! And they have a good anthropology program, and I'm not a hundred percent sure what I want to do but whatever it is I'm sure UCLA has it. And, and…um…I really want to go. They accepted me! And they offered me a scholarship!"

"I know," says Edward, not smiling. "You've been talking about it to Rosalie nonstop. I couldn't help but hear."

"Oh." Nessie goes to her father and takes his hand. _I know LA isn't a good place for vampires_, she thinks, _but I want to go there so badly. Will you at least consider it? It's such a good school!_

"I have considered it," says Edward sternly. "And I feel that your place is with your family." Nessie's face falls. "However," Edward goes on, "your mother has also been considering it, and she feels that your place is at UCLA. As you can imagine, I'm between a rock and a hard place." Nessie erupts in shrieks.

"Really?" she says. "Mom says it's okay?"

"She seems to think you'd like LA."

"Oh, I would, I would!"

"She also feels that you can be trusted to live on your own, since you'll be seven this September and therefore, as far as we know, an adult."

"I can, I can!"

"And since we'll be at UC Berkeley, we'll be able to see each other often. Very, very often."

"Right, right, whatever you say!" Nessie dances around her room, and after a moment her father is smiling openly.

"I'm just glad you picked a good school," he says drily. "Your mom wanted to go to community college. Honestly!"

"Hey now," Nessie says warningly. "Jake's doing community college."

"Yeah," says her father, snickering. "I noticed. He sure aimed for the stars on that one, didn't he?"

"Dad," says Nessie severely, coming to a halt in front of him. "Jake has done everything for himself. He doesn't have Alice to play the stock market for him, and he hasn't spent the last century saving his grocery money. I know you don't like him, but you should at least respect him."

"He could have gone to any school in the country," begins Edward argumentatively.

"What, if he'd let you pay for it?" interrupts Nessie. "If he'd abandoned his people while they still needed him? Do you even know him at all, Dad?" She doesn't wait for him to answer, because she already knows: Edward doesn't know Jake like she does.

No one knows Jake like she does.

* * *

Graduation and the summer following are milestones. Nessie family is absolutely _doting_ on her, like they're afraid that she's about to vanish into the ether, and as much as she loves them it is incredibly annoying that she never has time to herself.

The reason is that her family wants to take a trip across Europe. There are some orchestras Nessie's father wants to show her mother, and Alice is desperate to do some shopping in Milan and Paris and London. Carlisle has to go, because there will be a medical convention in Hamburg that he mustn't miss.

Nessie really, really, really doesn't want to go. She likes Europe okay, but she isn't looking forward to being dragged from place to place on the coattails of her beloved aunts. And she learned long ago that sightseeing with Bella Cullen née Swan is a total drag; Nessie's mom is allergic to enthusiasm.

But she doesn't know how to get out of it until one Sunday night just before leaving her grandpa's house, where she and her parents were having "dinner".

"You coming to see me this summer?" asks Grandpa Charlie. "I got your room all made up for you. Sue and I were thinking of maybe doing a little road trip down the coast and we'd be tickled if you wanted to come along. We could help you get moved in to your dorm if we time it right."

"I can't," says Nessie glumly, "my parents are going to Europe."

"Well, that'll be way more fun," says Charlie cheerfully. One of the things that Nessie both loves and hates about her grandfather is that he is so noncommittal about things that make him happy. It's nice insofar as he never pressures her to do things she doesn't want to do (like her parents do), but it's confusing too, because she can never really tell what he wants. The man is diffident to a fault.

"Not really," says Nessie. "I don't want to go. I mean, I've seen it. And I don't really want to spend sixty-five hours in a row shopping and listening to mopey classical music."

"Oh," says Grandpa Charlie thoughtfully. "Well, would you like to come with me instead?"

"I'd love to," says Nessie, "but I can't imagine my parents agreeing to it."

"You leave that to me," says Grandpa Charlie mysteriously. So she does, and the upshot is that a week later her mother tells her through pursed lips that if she wants to stay behind in drab old Forks instead of coming to exciting Europe with her family, that's her choice. Nessie's eyebrows shoot up to her hairline and she has to try hard not to dance around like a fool.

"Yeah," she says as casually as she can. "I think I'll just stay here. I mean, Grandpa Charlie offered and all..."

Whereupon her mother scowls like a thunderstorm and will say no more.

Chapter Break

"This is awesome, Grandpa!" exclaims Nessie halfway through July. She and her grandfather are hunkered over a spread-out map of California. Grandpa Charlie has a yellow highlighter and a blue highlighter, and he is using them to mark out every fun place Nessie wants to visit. They have Portland and the Sierras and Yosemite and the redwood forests and basically all of Mendocino County and Big Sur and Monterrey and Highway One all the way down to Santa Barbara. Nessie wants to see as many landmarks from Hitchcock films as possible.

It's actually hard for vampires—and half-vampires, and werewolves—to watch movies, because their eyes operate at a higher frame-rate than human eyes. This is the same quality that gives eagles and dogs such good reflexes. But the downside is that movies look flickery and halting, since they are made for human eyes which have a slower frame-rate. Luckily, Jasper is some kind of electronics genius, and he's figured out a way to make some movies watchable. Right now Nessie is really into _Vertigo_. She really wants to visit San Juan Bautista and pretend to be a doomed icy blonde. If only she can find someone to play along.

"Anyone you want to invite to come with us?" asks Charlie, right on cue.

"Really?" she asks.

"Sure," says Charlie. "See, I've been thinking about it. I don't think it would be a whole lot of fun for one of us to be crammed between suitcases in the back of Sue's coupe. And I'm not about to stick you in the backseat of the cruiser. But you have that BMW your daddy bought you, and you have to get it down to college _somehow_. What if you drove your car? I could sit in with you sometimes, ride with Sue sometimes…I wouldn't mind if you invited a friend. Or not, if you don't mind being crunched in Sue's clown car with us. Or we could rent a bigger car, too. It's up to you, I'm happy either way."

"Can I invite Jake?" says Nessie. "He does like my car."

"Now, why did I have a feeling you might say that?" laughs Charlie. "Yeah, you can invite Jake if you want."

"I'm gonna ask him right now!" Nessie scrabbles in her pockets for her phone.

"You do that, kiddo."

* * *

Two weeks later, Nessie is loading the last of her bags into her car. Jake has only one small suitcase, which is stuffed into a corner behind Nessie's many bags. Charlie and Sue are waiting for her on the curb. Her parents are on hand to wave her off. All of her packing has been done by Alice, with only mild oversight from Nessie. But that's okay, she likes everything Alice picks out for her. After their tour of Europe, her family will visit and bring the rest of Nessie's stuff to her on-campus apartment. Till then she'll live out of suitcases.

"See ya, Mom," she says, hugging her mother tightly. "Take lots of pictures for me, okay?"

"Only if you promise to do the same," says her mother. Edward ruffles his daughter's short hair (Alice gave it a trim to even things up and confessed that, Bella's whining notwithstanding, she actually likes it better this way). Then Nessie hops in the driver's seat and Jake hops in the passenger seat, and Sue pulls away and Nessie follows. An hour later they are cruising happily down US 12, catching the last of Seattle's college station. It is warm enough for the windows to be cracked; Nessie can't wait for her chance to actually put the top down on her car, something she's never yet had occasion to do.

In a few hours they are about ready for lunch, and so they head into the heart of Portland to confer.

"What do you guys think?" asks Charlie. "Anything in particular you want to eat?"

Nessie sniffs the air and looks around. "I want that," she says, pointing. A Thai food cart is emitting some outlandishly appetizing smells. There are other carts clustered nearby, too, all of their aromas mixing in the air and making Nessie slobber.

"Hey, look at that," says Charlie good-naturedly. "We seem to have stumbled upon the food-cart district."

"Mmm," says Sue enthusiastically. "Vietnamese! You have no idea," she says to Nessie, "how goddamn hard it is to get good Vietnamese on the rez. Or in town. Or anywhere closer than Seattle."

"Sounds like a bummer," says Nessie. "Sooke may not have the best chow, but Victoria's pretty good. And we go up to Vancouver about once a month. I always get good grub up there."

"And they just sit and watch you eat, huh?" says Sue drily.

"Yeah," says Nessie, shrugging. "I'm used to it. But I'd much rather be with people who can share my meals. Even if I do eat five times as much as a human."

"Hey, no worries," says Sue, smiling. She's always been rather sweet to Nessie, considering Nessie's parentage. It probably helps that Nessie used to play with Seth all the time, who in Sue's eyes can do no wrong. "You'll just have to eat five times as fast."

Nessie orders some kind of poached chicken thing with spicy sauce and rice from the Bangkok cart. Jake heads over to a smoky barbeque cart and orders about ten pounds of steaming, dripping meat. They reconvene with Charlie and Sue at a table under an awning nearby and dig in.

Sue and Charlie are done long before Nessie and Jake have even taken the edge off their massive metabolisms, so the two older people take a walk to look around while Nessie and Jake drift from cart to cart. They sample poutine from a French-Canadian cart (Nessie, who has been to Montreal, deems it unusual but delicious). They split a whole fish from a Greek cart, and Jake grosses Nessie out by sucking the eyeballs from their sockets and spitting them at her. They get jerked chicken from a Jamaican place, and when they are finally approaching fullness, they top everything off with huge cones of soft-serve. The sun is starting to cast slanted shadows by the time they have settled onto a bench to consume their ice cream, and Charlie and Sue are still nowhere to be seen.

"Man," says Nessie. "I'm almost full."

"Me too," says Jake. He bites the point off his cone and sucks melted ice cream through the hole. Nessie watches him in mock-disgust.

"Pig," she says.

"You're just jealous because I have the ultimate way to eat soft-serve," he says, sticking his tongue out at her.

"I bet it takes you forever to eat it like that."

"I bet it doesn't."

"I bet I can do it faster," says Nessie.

"I bet you can't," says Jake. And it's on: Nessie chomps the point off of her cone and the two of them spend the next five minutes alternately trash-talking each other and slurping noisily on their ice creams. It's down to the wire; Nessie's cone is melting faster because she had the forethought to wrap her warm hands around it, but Jake has a bigger mouth and therefore greater sucking capacity.

"You're going down!" gloats Nessie as the last of her ice cream drips into her mouth.

"Like tits I am!" says Jake, and he pops what's left of his cone in his mouth and swallows it whole.

"Cheater!" exclaims Nessie, smacking him in the arm.

"I was in it to win it," declares Jake, swatting back at her. "I hope you've learned your lesson, little one."

"Oh, hey, Jake," says Nessie innocently, "You have a little—" And she crams her soggy, empty ice cream cone against his mouth.

"Oh, you are in so much trouble," he says, and then he begins smooshing his sticky face all over her. Nessie shrieks with laughter and tries to bat him away, but he deflects her blows and mashes his mouth on her collarbone.

"I surrender! I surrender!" she hollers, holding up her hands and wheezing with laughter.

"I thought you might," says Jake. They are still laughing when Charlie and Sue stroll up, holding hands.

"Um…you guys need a baby wipe or something?" asks Sue uncertainly, staring from one helplessly laughing young adult to the other.

"Mm-mm," says Nessie. "Sue, your nephew is a brute."

"Tell me something I _don't_ know," says Sue.

* * *

**Hey guys! Thanks for reviewing! I hope you like this chapter...and I hope each and every one of you gets a chance to pet a puppy this week, but that's neither here nor there.**


	14. Workout

**Hola lovers! Thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing, and I have a question for you: Can anyone recommend a good beta for J/N dramatic stories? I have had abysmal success browsing betas on the site and thought I'd try asking for help instead. If you know of anyone who I can get in touch with to ask, just shoot me a PM and be my eternal savior. Also, does anyone else have the problem of losing all formatting when you copy/paste a new chapter into the doc uploader? Its driving me crazy. Boo-urns!**

* * *

In order to spare everyone's pride expenses are being split up thusly: Nessie pays for hotels, excusing it as a gift from her parents. Charlie pays for whatever meals they eat together. Sue pays admission to wherever they go that requires admission. Jake pays for booze. Everyone contributes to gas and tolls, and everyone pays for personal purchases and individual meals.

It turns out that Nessie's is the most expensive responsibility, which is the way she likes it. Sue and Charlie share a hotel room—although Sue still lives on the rez and Charlie still lives in his house in Forks, no one has any illusions left about the nature of their relationship. But Jake and Nessie both require their own rooms, and Nessie doesn't go in for cheap motels.

After they get checked in to a five star hotel on Waterfront St, they all take a couple of hours to shower and decompress. Nessie soaks in a tub for a solid half hour and then slathers on her nice lotion, the kind that smells like honeysuckle. She combs her hair and lets it air-dry, flips through the channels a few times. Then she's bored, so she wanders around the hotel looking at things. She's wandering through the main reception hall when she bumps into Jake, who apparently had the same idea.

"Charlie and Sue weren't responding to my knocks," he says by way of greeting. "I think we should give them…oh, another six minutes should do it." Nessie smiles.

They head around a corner and see the entrance to the exercise room. There are a few people there now, getting in an afternoon workout. Jake looks at Nessie. Nessie looks at Jake.

"You know," says Jake in a voice of exaggerated reluctance, "I'm really out of shape."

"Ugh, me too," says Nessie. "I feel like such a lump after that lunch."

"We should probably put in some time on the treadmill, huh?" says Jake.

"I don't see that we have any choice," says Nessie. She strolls into the workout room; after a moment, so does Jake. Nessie loads the heaviest weights onto the barbell and settles under the bar, knees up and feet together.

"Hey, hey, hey!" yells a weight-room attendant, hurrying over to her.

Nessie sits up. "Yeah?" she asks. "Am I doing it wrong?" This is a serious question: Nessie has never lifted weights in a weight room. She's more of a take-down-a-black-bear-by-hand kinda girl.

"You need a spotter," says the attendant. He's a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, decently cute. "I can spot you, if you want. But you need to start out with something you know you can lift and then work up to it."

"Oh," says Nessie stupidly. "Okay. Sounds great!" She watches as the attendant pulls the heavy weights off the bar and replaces them with much smaller ones. Jake is laughing at her from across the room. Nessie sticks her tongue out at him and then settles under the bar again.

"So, what do I do?" she asks the attendant, who is only too glad to help out. He positions her hands on the bar and then holds his own underneath it while Nessie lifts it smoothly.

"Too heavy?" he asks, grinning hopefully down at her. Nessie shakes her head. "Okay," he says, "How about we add some weights?"

Little by little, the attendant adds weights to Nessie's barbell. She looks over at Jake once and sees him looking at her, and then he winks and pantomimes struggling under his piddly little fifty-weight dumbbell. Nessie winks back and begins to pretend to be straining.

"Okay," says the attendant, "I think that's enough for right now. You don't want to tear anything. Did you stretch before you started?" He is beginning to fancy himself quite the personal trainer. Nessie finds this inexplicably funny. Is he really that terrified she'll hurt herself on his watch?

"No," she says. "I didn't know you were supposed to…" …_stretch before doing such pathetic exercises_, she adds in her head.

"I can show you some basic stretches!" offers the attendant eagerly. His name-badge reads Tim. He sure as heck looks like a Tim.

"That's okay," says Nessie. "I think that guys needs some help." She gestures at Jake, who is appearing to have great difficulty with a weight-lifting machine that frankly looks like a torture device. Tim grimaces and heads over to Jake. Nessie follows him.

"Need help?" he asks Jake.

"Nope," pants Jake, struggling for all he's worth against the cumulative sixty pounds. "I got it!"

"Problem solved!" says Tim, turning back to Nessie.

But Nessie clucks her tongue. "I think you're doing it wrong," she says. "You're supposed to pull on it, not push. Right, Tim?"

"Huh?" Tim doesn't even look away from Nessie. "Oh, right. Yeah. You gotta push on it."

"Like this?" asks Jake, straining ever harder.

"Uh huh," says Tim.

"Tim!" reproaches Nessie.

"Yes?" he asks, delighted to be addressed by name.

"Never mind," she says. She sticks her hand out to Jake. "I saw you owning that treadmill earlier. What'd you get, one, maybe two miles per hour out of that baby?"

"Oh, at least one and a half," says Jake modestly, taking Nessie's hand in his and shaking it delicately. "I saw you working the weights over there. Did you even stretch first?"

"No," says Nessie. "Should I have?"

"I can show you how to stretch!" exclaims Tim, practically waving his arms in the air.

Jake unfolds himself from the weight machine and towers over Nessie and Tim. Tim blanches at the sight and seems to shrink in on himself. "I can help you stretch," Jake offers. "I'm a first-rate stretcher."

"That would be nice," says Nessie. "Tim says stretching is important. Right, Tim?"

"Ah…" says Tim, eyeing Jake, clearly torn between his desire to teach Nessie advanced stretching and his desire not to be around the giant man-beast any more. He seems to make up his mind. "I work here," he says firmly. "So maybe I should do it."

"Oh, nonsense," says Jake, and quicker than thought he reaches out and plucks Nessie off the gray carpet.

"Hey, hey, hey!" shouts Tim, bouncing around nervously. "You're not allowed to—"

"You did say I was supposed to stretch, right?" asks Nessie from above Tim's head. Jake has grabbed her wrists and held them up above his head and now she's dangling in mid air, and actually it _does_feel nice. Nessie arches her back luxuriantly and feels a few vertebrae pop. She can feel Jake shaking with suppressed laughter. She can also tell Tim is pretending not to check out her weight rack.

"Yeah, but—"

"Relax, Tim," says Jake. "I can take it from here. Hey, what'd you say your name was?" he asks Nessie, wrapping one arm around her waist while holding her wrists in his other hand so he can extend her spine more fully.

"I didn't," she says, exhaling into the stretch which, holy shit, feels _incredible_. "I'm Neh…Neh…_Nessie_." She breathes out the word in a long release as about a million pounds of pressure evaporate from her bones. "Holy shit," she says breathlessly, "that feels amazing! What's your name, giant?" Tim begins to slink away, looking miserable and shooting envious glances at Jake and Nessie.

"I'm Jacob," says Jake. He uses his free hand to knead the small of Nessie's back, and her bones instantly turn to jelly. He gently lowers her to the ground and steadies her with his hands around her waist.

"Christ!" she says, swaying where she stands. "Wherever the fuck did you learn that one? You are my own personal savior, Jake. I'll never make fun of you again. I feel like I could fly!"

"Wanna try?" Jake suggests, reaching for her again with a wicked glint in his eye.

"Maybe later," says Nessie. "We'll find a nice tall cliff for you to throw me off of. But first, I should really thank you properly for doing that to my back. I feel like a whole new woman."

"Well, maybe next time you can—" But before Jake can finish his sentence, Nessie catapults over him, grips one leg around his torso while simultaneously pushing gently but firmly against the small of his back with her other one. She wraps her arms around his broad shoulders and pulls them back, and it sounds like an explosion in a fireworks factory up and down Jake's spine.

"_Unngh!_" cries Jake, half in ecstasy, half in pain.

Across the room, Tim looks like he wants to cry.

* * *

"Where did you guys go?" asks Charlie a little while later.

"We were checking out the rest of the hotel," says Nessie innocently. "This place has a really good weight room."

* * *

Nessie sleeps like a baby that night, floating from one side of her pillow-top king-size bed to the other. Her dreams are full of Jake's hands, which disassemble every bone in her body, polish them neatly, and put them back together again one by one.


	15. Healthy Respect for Personal Boundaries

**Hello dears. Thanks you al ever so much for reading and reviewing. Enjoy this very silly chapter (most of them are silly from here on out).**

* * *

The next day Nessie wakes with the sun. She bounces out of bed, still feeling weightless and boneless after whatever voodoo Jake worked on her body, and springs into the shower. She gets dressed in a green-and-blue colorblocked Mod minidress and yellow over-knee socks. It's sunny out, and she wants to match the weather.

Then she runs down the hall to Jake's room and tries the handle. It's locked, and she can hear him breathing heavily inside. It sounds like he's still asleep. That'll never do. Nessie returns to her own room and heads out onto the balcony. There is a space of about ten feet between balconies, and Charlie and Sue have their room between Jake and Nessie. No problem: she simply leaps across to Jake's balcony. The sliding glass door into his room is locked, but Nessie jimmies it quietly until it snicks open. She creeps across the floor to Jake's bed. He is spread-eagled, face down, taking up the whole darn king-size mattress. Maybe that's why he can't keep a girlfriend: he doesn't know how to share a bed.

Nessie backs up a few paces and then takes a running jump straight onto Jake's bare back.

"Holy fucking assballs!" shouts Jake, falling out of bed with a crash. "I'm up, I'm up!"

"I'd say you're down," says Nessie, looking down at him from where she stands on his bed. Jake glares up at her, but the effect is ruined when his eyes widen and he jerks his head away. Nessie glances down at herself and realizes Jake just got a front-row view of her undies.

"Yeah, I wear puppy-dog underwear," she says defiantly, smoothing her dress down. "You wanna make something of it?"

"Just so we're clear," says Jake, "and not that I was looking, but—are the puppy dogs on your underwear, perchance, bottle-feeding lion cubs?"

"Yes," says Nessie brightly. "Yes, they are. They're from Japan. There is nothing but cute stuff in Japan, I'm telling you. Hello Kitty is the least of it."

"Ah," says Jake, still carefully not looking up. "Um…I don't mean to be rude or anything, but…"

"Yes?"

"Unlike _some_people in this room, I have a healthy respect for privacy and personal boundaries…"

"Psh," scoffs Nessie, rolling her eyes. "Since when do _you_have personal boundaries?"

"Well, I'm beginning to appreciate them…" says Jake awkwardly, clutching his blanket closer.

"Jacob Black," says Nessie severely as she realizes what poor Jake is getting at, "You're not wearing anything under that blanket, are you?" Jake shakes his head solemnly. "Very well, you wanton creature," she says melodramatically. "I'm going down to the breakfast room. You know where to find me, assuming you can locate your dignity first."

"Hey," says Jake as she exits via the door, "You want to talk about dignity, buy some grownup underwear."

* * *

After a hearty breakfast, the four drive out to Washington Park International Rose Test Garden, which is basically a huge sunny garden full of roses that look like they fell out of a Seuss book. Nessie and Jake spend a long time running down the broad avenues of roses, poking their noses into flowers. Nessie drags Jake into the miniature rose garden so that she can laugh at how extra-huge he looks next to all the thumb-sized specimens. Then she makes everyone gather in the Shakespeare garden so she can take pictures to appease her lameoid parents.

They have lunch at another pod of food carts, then head out to an amusement park for the afternoon. Charlie and Sue are acting like whole new people, both of them smiling and joking more than Nessie's ever noticed before. And Jake seems extra cheery, too. Getting away from Forks is doing everyone a world of good. Charlie even wins a stuffed panda for Sue at the ring toss. Not to be outdone, Jake wins an even bigger stuffed blowfish for Sue. Then Nessie cracks her knuckles, takes a deep breath, and wins Sue a huge blowup plastic killer whale.

"What am I supposed to do with all these?" laughs Sue, nearly collapsing under all her prizes.

"Well," says Jake, "you could give them to some giant orphans."

"I think I'll just give them back," says Sue. "I'm pretty sure you two cheated, anyway." Nessie and Jake pretend to be outraged, but they did sort of cheat—if being genetically gifted with superhuman reflexes counts as cheating. But Sue does keep Charlie's panda.

They eat out for dinner, and then they drive to a Japanese tea garden just as the sun is going down. Charlie and Sue settle under a pavilion with a pot of oolong between them. Nessie and Jake help them with their tea until the sun is gone, and then they sneak away to stare at the mesmerizing ripples on the pond from a little wooden bridge.

"Moon's big tonight," says Jake, looking at the reflection in the water below them.

"The moon doesn't change size," says Nessie. "What you meant to say is, you're small tonight."

"I guess you'd know, wouldn't you?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

They keep their voices low and gentle, lest they carry across the water and disturb the teahouse's other patrons. "Nothing," says Jake. "…_Shrimpy_," he adds under his breath.

"Ohh," says Nessie, "so it's gonna be personal, is it?"

"It's always personal."

"You want to fight?"

"I always want to fight."

"Okay," says Nessie, holding out her hand. Jake looks at it for a moment, and then reaches out and takes it. They lock fingers.

"One," says Jake.

"Two," says Nessie.

"Three."

"Four."

"I declare a—"

"_Thumb war!_" Nessie pins Jake's thumb in two seconds.

"Hey!" he protests. "I wasn't ready!"

"Too bad," says Nessie. "Rules of engagement: in the event of a tie, the prettiest combatant wins."

"You're right," groans Jake. "All right. I win."

"Oh ho!" exclaims Nessie, looking up at Jake and intending to insult him badly for that slight. She pauses. The moonlight is hitting him very peculiarly. His broad cheekbones and the prominent bridge of his long nose are glowing palely under its white light. His eyes look even more black and almond-shaped and inscrutable tonight. His hair is tied at the nape of his neck. Nessie reaches up and pulls the rubber band gently away, and his heavy black hair falls in a gleaming curtain to his shoulders.

"What?" Jake asks quietly.

Nessie sighs and turns away. "Fine," she says. "We'll call it a draw."

* * *

The next morning, the four travelers load up their cars. Jake hops in Sue's car and Charlie rides with Nessie.

"So, you're headed to UCLA in the fall, huh Ness?" asks Charlie.

"Mm hmm."

"I'm amazed your parents are lettin' you go so far away."

"Well, they're going to move to San Francisco," says Nessie. "I'll still see them plenty."

"How's that boyfriend of yours takin' it?"

"Um," says Nessie.

"Oh, shoot," says Charlie. "I can never keep up. Are you still dating that one kid? Bill—no, Will!—Will?"

"Yeah," says Nessie. "I guess I am." She hasn't thought about him—not once—since they left. That's not a good sign. She's a terrible girlfriend! But she's beginning to wonder if Will is quite her cup of tea.

"Doesn't sound like you're too thrilled about that," says Charlie. "Ain't he your type?"

"No, it's not that," says Nessie. "I really like him. Like, a lot. He's really nice. But I don't know…I'm not sure about the long-distance thing. He's going to BCU."

"Well," says Charlie, "it's not like you're married to the kid."

"Yeah."

"Besides, are you really old enough to date seriously?" Nessie turns to give her grandfather a _Dude? Please _look.

"Yeah, okay," says Charlie. "I know, I know. You're not a kid anymore. What would you say you are, eighteen? Nineteen?"

"I'm not sure," admits Nessie. "I can't tell. They think I'm about done growing, but lately I haven't been growing so much as just…filling out. Or something. Like, if I look I can kind of see cheekbones coming in. And if I hold my hair out of the way, my ears stick out like yours."

"Lucky you," says Charlie drily.

"I like my sticking-out ears," says Nessie staunchly. "I'm glad I look like you."

"You don't look much like me," says Charlie. "But thanks for saying it, anyway."

"How are things with Sue?" asks Nessie.

"Well," says Charlie, and his neck turns red in exactly the same way Nessie's does when she is halfway to Blushville. "Pretty good, as a matter of fact."

"You've been together what, eight years?"

"Just about."

"We don't have to talk about it if you don't want," says Nessie.

"I don't mind," says Charlie, looking in his the passenger-side rearview mirror at Sue's car behind them. "She's a hell of a woman."


	16. Two Buck Chuck and Porn

They stop at a Trader Joe's just shy of Redwood National Forest and fill their coolers with meat, cheese, fresh fruit, and bread. It is mid-afternoon by this time, and the day is warm. They drive into the park and find a place to stop and have a picnic.

After their late lunch, the old people want to sit and stare at the tress or some boring old-person crap like that, and so Jake and Nessie run off on one of the hiking trails marked "difficult."

"Good day for hiking, isn't it?" says Jake, eyes twinkling. And from his pack he produces a bottle of wine that he must have gotten on the sly from Trader Joe's. Nessie grins. "It's okay for grocery-store swill," he says.

"I really wouldn't know," says Nessie. "I've only ever had beer."

"Really?" asks Jake.

"Um, you were there both times," she points out.

"Shit, am I seriously the only one who ever sneaks you booze?" he asks. Nessie nods. "Damn. Your family is lame. Both my sisters _and_ Leah Clearwater used to help me out."

"Well, all I've got is you," says Nessie. "Shall we?"

Jake uncorks the bottle and holds it out. "Here you go, Ness. Your first taste of shitty pee- wine."

"Are we supposed to let it breathe or something?" she asks.

"For two-buck chuck?" Jake says, laughing. "I'd say it's best if you just try not to think about what you're putting in your mouth."

It actually isn't as bad as Nessie expected from Jake's warnings. It just tastes like alcoholic grape juice. Pretty bland, but after half a bottle has vanished between them and they are semi-lost in the trees, Nessie is beginning to feel an enjoyable warmth in the pit of her stomach.

"Dude, Jake!" she says, flinging her arms as far around a tree as they will go (it's not far). "These trees are frickin' gigantic! They're almost as big as you!"

"Puny trees!" bellows Jake in a scary bass, "Prepare to be obliterated!"

"No!" shrieks Nessie, running to throw herself between Jake and the nearest redwood. "The trees are our friends! We must love the trees!"

"All shall tremble before the mighty Jay-borg!" rumbles Jake.

"Jay-borg?" giggles Nessie. "That's your evil super-villain name? Really?"

"Whaaat?" Jake says plaintively. "Don't you like it?"

"No," says Nessie. "You need a new one. One that's actually scary. Let's call you… Man in Black!"

"Um, Ness?" says Jake delicately, "That's a porn name. A gay one. You just gave me a gay porn name."

"I did?" she asks. "I didn't know."

"Let me guess," says Jake, rolling his eyes, "you don't watch porn."

"Um, no?" Nessie takes another pull at the bottle. It doesn't taste bad at all anymore. It tastes great! Everything tastes great and is so wonderful! This isn't at all like the last time she got drunk, because she was really tired then. She feels wide awake now, and she's interested in everything, and everything is funny. "Should I?"

"If you want. But I bet your parents have a child lock on your internet."

"Maybe they do," says Nessie. "I never looked. But now I wanna!"

"Oh, Ness," sighs Jake. "If it weren't for my unholy influence, you'd be such a sweet girl."

"Do you look at porn?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you do."

"Ten points for Hufflepuff!"

Nessie stares at Jake in mock-fury. "_Hufflepuff?_" she hisses. "You didn't!"

"Oh, but I did." Jake grins cheekily and kisses the tip of Nessie's nose.

"No way am I a Hufflepuff! You're a Hufflepuff!"

"Damn straight," says Jake proudly. "Their animal is the badger. Badgers are scary as shit! I'm serious! Haven't you ever YouTubed a badger taking down a gazelle or whatever?"

"No," says Nessie. "Now I wanna do that, too. Hey!" she says as a thought occurs to her. "Is there…" she says slowly, "…such a thing as _Hufflepuff porn?_"

Jake throws his head back and laughs so loudly a few birds take flight. "Nessie," he chortles, "Is that even a real question?"

"Is that a no?"

"Okay, to save you having to ask this question over and over and over again for the rest of your life, let me just tell you this once: everything you can think of, every single _weird, twisted thing_, has already been made into porn. If you can think it, someone's already filmed people fucking to it."

"No way!" says Nessie. "Santa Claus!"

"Been there."

"Santa Claus on a metal operating table in an observation room."

"Done that. Although I'm beginning to wonder what goes on in that curly little head of yours."

"Santa Claus," she says, all cards on the table, "on a metal operating table in an observation room, _being observed by med students with clipboards for faces and faces for clipboards."_

Jake stares at her. Then he feigns a yawn. "So vanilla," he says.

"You turd! No way!" Nessie snatches the bottle from him and drinks. Jake grins, snatches it back, and drinks even more.

"All right," he concedes, "so I haven't actually Googled that particular one. But I guarantee you it exists."

"Lies," says Nessie. "All lies."

"Okay," says Jake. "You caught me. I _do_ watch Santa Claus porn."

"I knew it!" she hisses, an inch from his face. She pokes one finger between his eyes. "You are such a perv, little man!"

"Honestly," says Jake, cautiously nudging her fingernail away from the region of his corneas, "now I just want to know what could be weirder than the porn you just described. I can't begin to imagine it. But I bet you can, you little freak."

"Thanks, Jake!" says Nessie. "What could it be? Aliens?"

"Aliens are easy," says Jake. "They have so many body parts."

"Old people?"

"Please."

"Cowboys and Indians?" she asks hopefully.

"Are you even trying?"

"Umm…I know it's not school-teachers or nuns or delivery boys. It has to be something really unsexy." Nessie is sure she can hit the right formula if only she thinks hard, and drinks enough.

"That's impossible. In the right context, everything becomes sexy."

"No way!" she exclaims, shaking her head. "This tree." She pats the rough bark.

"Fucking under, against or in it."

"Your car."

"Ditto. And I don't like what you're implying about my girl. We have to think about unsexy _people_ here, Ness. Objects are too easy. People are unpredictable and therefore mysterious."

"Um…the dad from _The Incredibles_."

"What are you, new?" says Jake. "Superheroes have their own following. What about Rosie O'Donnell?"

"People like Rosie O'Donnell _also_ have their own following," points out Nessie. "Pope Benedict."

"A clergyman?" repeats Jake. "Are you serious? Besides, he looks like a vampire. You know how people are about vampires."

"True," admits Nessie. "Okay, how 'bout Luke Skywalker? As played by Mark Hamill."

Jake shudders. "Ugh," he says. "Okay. There is one thing that is not sexy under any circumstances, and it is Mark Hamill playing Luke Skywalker. You win the prize."

"What's the prize?" Nessie asks hopefully. Is it a cookie?

"You get to figure out where the hell we are and navigate us back to the car. Try to time it so we're sober by the time your grandpa sees us."

Nessie looks around. The late afternoon sun sparkles on the empty bottle of chuck in Jake's hand.

"You get us back to the car," she says. "You're the adult."

"Not by much," he argues.

"You're adulter than me, anyway."

"Not by much," he says again, shrugging.

"I think it's this way," says Nessie, walking decisively in a random direction.

Jake sighs, hooks a hand around her waist and pulls her in the opposite direction. "You're hopeless," he says. "This way. The car is this way."

* * *

**Hey guys! Thanks for reading, thanks for reviewing, and what is your favorite unholy porn? Go ahead, I already told you mine, fair's fair.**


	17. Dive, Swim, Fly

After a night spent at an inn in Eureka, Nessie and the others take the 101 through Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The trees look perfect in the mid-morning light, and Jake spends a long time babbling about some place called Endor. Then they hop on the PCH around Fort Bragg and drive with the Pacific on their right and rocky cliffs on their left. They stop in Mendocino for a picnic lunch, and then Charlie and Sue express a desire to go wine-tasting. Well, Charlie will taste wine; Sue, who has a family history of addiction, is sticking to local olive oils and grapes and designated driving through scenic Mendocino. Nessie would love to go wine-tasting so that she can learn how to annoy her friends at parties, but instead she and Jake agree to meet back up with Charlie and Sue after a reasonable interlude. After lunch the sun has really burned off the morning mist, and now the air is radiantly clear and beginning to be hot. So Nessie puts down the top on the Beemer, and she and Jake cruise around Mendocino looking for something to do.

After a little while they spot some bluffs covered with little lichen-like flowers and roaring with wind. Nessie pulls over and climbs out to collect the succulent blooms, which she then braids into a crown for herself. She looks up to see Jake standing at the very edge of the tallest bluff, which is far above the aggressive waves. He's looking down thoughtfully at the jagged jumble of rocks that foot the bluff. Nessie joins him.

"Those waves look pretty rough," she says casually.

"It'd be a shame if one of us fell in," he agrees.

"Could we even survive that, do you think?"

"Only one way to find out for sure," says Jake. He takes her hand. She glances back down at the waves. She's not worried about herself, but she wonders if Jake's body can handle the rocks at the bottom. "Probably," he says in answer to her unspoken thought.

Nessie takes a deep breath. Jake's hand is steady and reassuring in hers. The height isn't much greater than at home, but the waves are far more powerful and the scree at the bottom is nothing but jagged boulders surrounding narrow interstices of water.

"Feeling reckless?" asks Jake.

Nessie squeezes his fingers. They both take a step back, kick off their shoes, and then leap forward.

They are flying.

The wind buffets her face and hair and dress, and rips the crown of succulents from her head. She looks down and calculates their descent in her mind. They are going to hit uncomfortably close to a particular spire she doesn't like the look of, so she twitches a little to adjust their trajectory. She tugs Jake's hand and pulls him flush against her, and then he wraps his arms around her shoulders and she wraps hers around his waist and arranges her body so that her feet will hit the water first. Instead of two people falling they are one dense bullet by the time they make impact, and they cleave a long way through the dark, cold water. Nessie and Jake cling to each other as protection against the thrashing force of the waves, and they both keep their eyes open so they won't blindly smash into anything underwater. Then their downward path slows, and they relinquish their grip and kick for the air.

Jake has a minor coughing fit when they break the surface, and Nessie's mucous membranes are stinging sharply, but both their hearts are pounding furiously and a thrill is coursing through Nessie's body. They swim for the nearest landing place, which is a little far away—they weren't thinking about how they were going to get out when they decided to jump in. Nessie shoots out of the water and onto slimy land first, turns around and helps Jake out. They climb back up to the top of the bluff, wet fingers still intertwined, and Nessie can practically smell the adrenaline that is coming off of Jake as steam. They don't speak until they get back up to the car and the sun is beginning to dry their skin and make it crackle with salt.

"Okay," says Jake hoarsely after a while, "that wasn't anything like cliff-diving in Forks, was it?"

"Not remotely!" says Nessie, and her voice is a little rough too from the seawater. "That was a lot scarier."

"And cooler."

"Definitely cooler," she agrees. "I'm too salty to get in my car, though."

"Here," says Jake, rummaging through their food pack. He tosses her a big bottle of water. "You can rinse off with that."

Nessie catches it, turns away from Jake and shimmies out of her soaking wet dress. There's nothing she can do about her hair right now, but she does pour fresh water over her body and attempt to scrub off the salt residue. She tosses the remainder of the bottle over to Jake, who is wringing out his soggy t-shirt and shorts with his back to her. Then she opens up the trunk and roots around until she extracts a fresh pair of undies and a clean dry dress.

Then she walks back over to the bluffs and collapses in a clump of statice, hands clasped under her head, looking up at the sky. The wind is so high that the clouds are skittering over her head at breakneck speeds. She takes in a deep breath of sea air and enjoys the sun on her skin. Slowly she feels the adrenaline draining, leaving in its place a pleasurable warm sleepiness.

There is a gentle thud beside her as Jake lies down with his head beside hers.

"I like it here," she says.

"Me too," he says.

"Let's just stay here forever," she says dreamily. "We don't need to eat or move ever again, do we?"

"Nope," he says. Nessie can hear the smile in his voice.

"Hey, Jake?"

"Yeah?"

"If I take a nap, will you promise to fend off our enemies?"

"I was about to ask you the same thing," he says.

"Oh, okay," she says. "I guess we'll just have to be doomed, because I can't keep my eyes open for another second."

"Me neither."

* * *

Nessie is flying. The air that rushes past her face could almost be solid, but it feels wonderful.

She looks down. Cupped in her hands is a tiny red wolf, the size of a newborn kitten. It paces across her palm, its tail low. It catches her looking and growls up at her.

"Sorry," she tells the wolf. "I wasn't thinking. You probably want to be big again."

Suddenly the wolf _is _ big again, much bigger than Nessie. She is pacing across its cupped paws, and it is grinning down at her through its forest of teeth.

"Sorry," says the wolf. "Did you want to be big, too?"

"Isn't it all relative, anyway?" she asks. "You can put me down if you're tired of carrying me. I think I can fly on my own."

"I don't know if you can. We're awfully high up."

Nessie looks down and realizes that the wolf is right; the sea floor is far away. But they aren't falling toward it. Why aren't they falling toward it?

"Because we're flying," says the wolf patiently.

"No we're not," says Nessie. "We're swimming. Can't you see?"

"Oh," says the wolf, snapping his universe-sized jaws around a pod of sperm whales that is soaring past. "I guess so. I'll let go of you if you want, but wouldn't you rather learn how to swim first?"

"I know how to swim."

"Not with me, you don't." The wolf executes a complicated arabesque through the water. "But I'll put you down if you want," he adds.

"No," says Nessie. "Not yet. I like it here." She settles comfortably against his razor-sharp claws and relaxes into the warm current. "I think I'll stay a while."

"Okay," says the wolf. "You can stay as long as you like. I'm in no hurry."

"Thanks," she says gratefully. "You won't regret it, I promise. It'll be worth the wait."

* * *

The buzzing of Nessie's phone wakes her up. Her phone fell in the ice plants a few yards away, and she almost didn't hear it over the crashing waves and the wind. Just as she notices it's Grandpa Charlie calling, she notices that the angle of the light is several hours different. She and Jake slept a long time.

"Hey, Grandpa!" she says.

"Hey, kiddo!" says Charlie. "Where'd you guys take off to? Sue and I are having a bite in Fort Bragg."

"We're right near there!" says Nessie. "We'll meet you." Charlie gives her directions and hangs up. Nessie creeps back over to where Jake is still sleeping. There is something fundamentally comforting and natural about the steady, deep breathing of a sleeping Jake. Nessie almost doesn't want to wake him.

She puts her hand against his cheek and thinks some waking-up thoughts. She pictures a lemon tree growing on the bluff in fast-motion, then she imagines the sharp scent of citrus as clearly as she can. She does the same thing with a lime tree, and then a coconut palm, and all Jake does is turn on his side and nuzzle against her hand. _Wake up_, she thinks at him. Then, more loudly, _Wake up wake up wake up! Nothing. Jake! Hey! Embry just stole your wallet!_

Jake's eyes snap open. "Huh?" he asks groggily.

"Charlie called. They're at a diner in Fort Bragg. You hungry?"

Jake smacks his lips. "As a matter of fact," he says, "I'm so hungry I could eat a barrel of day-old squid."

* * *

After a late lunch, they continue on to San Francisco. Jake looks at the keys in Nessie's hand and raises his eyebrows.

"You know," he says, "if you're still tired, I could always—"

"Nah, I'm good," she says. "Can you navigate?"

Jake pulls an evil face. "I will drive your car yet," he says diabolically, rubbing his hands together and cackling facetiously. Nessie raises her eyebrows.

"Oh, really?" she says. "Is that a challenge?"

"Muahahahahaha," he answers.

"You're on, little man," she says. "If you want to drive my darling, you have to earn it." Of course, she would have let him drive it any time he asked. But this will be so much more fun.

"Oh, I will," he says evilly. "_I will_."


	18. The First Contest

**Hey all! Thanks for reading and reviewing!**

* * *

They get into San Francisco after the sun has set, and head straight for their hotel. Sue and Charlie are obviously exhausted, and head to bed shortly after a modest dinner in the dining room of the Ritz-Carlton, but both Nessie and Jake are wired from their nap. They intend to stay in San Francisco for several days, so Nessie puts her abundant energy into neatly unpacking her luggage and shaking the wrinkles out of her phalanx of colorful dresses. She sorts her lingerie drawer and slips into a nightie. She turns down her covers and stares at the bed for a while. Then she sighs, goes down the hall and knocks on Jake's door.

"So you've come crawling back," he says as he opens the door. Nessie raises one eyebrow at him, lifts her chin, and pushes past him into the room. "Welcome to my lair," he says.

Nessie gives Jake a haughty once-over. His hair is still wet from a shower, and he doesn't look very evil in nothing but a fluffy white towel. Not to mention that whenever he speaks to her, his voice is practically a purr. She doubts he even notices it; he can sound pretty scary when he's talking to people he doesn't like or when he's bossing his wolves around, but with Nessie his voice is so soft and deep you could swim around in it. "Indeed," she says, eyeing the fancy embroidered _R-C _ on his towel. "Indeed."

"The _R-C_," he says, following her eyeline, "Stands for _Really Cool_. Which is what I am. Which is why I must drive your car."

"I think it stands for _Runny Constipation_," says Nessie.

"Impossible," says Jake. "It can't be constipation if it's runny. I win. Let me drive your car."

"Not so fast," she says, strutting over to the king-size bed and perching elegantly on the edge. What she wouldn't give for a hairless cat to stroke right about now! "You must prove your worth by beating me in a tournament of three challenges. I will decide the first test. And then I will decide the other two. And you aren't going to like them, because I am an evil, evil person."

"Like it or not," says Jake, "I will destroy you."

"Very well. The first test is this: We are in the great city of San Francisco, a realm known for its liberal approach to certain behaviors." Jake blanches. "Don't worry," says Nessie, "I'm not going to ask you to bone a dude. You and I are going to go out. We are going to a bar, or maybe a club. And the first of us to be propositioned for anything more colorful than man-on-woman sex wins this round."

"Just so we're clear," says Jake, "when I am propositioned six seconds after I walk in the door, do I actually have to follow through?"

"Not unless you want to," says Nessie. "But it isn't as if you stand a chance of winning. You cannot hold a candle to my natural magnetism."

"You lie, witch!" he says. "Get out of here! I have to change into my assless chaps."

"Meet you in the lounge in a half hour?"

"Deal."

* * *

Nessie didn't bring clubby clothes on this trip, because she doesn't own any. It is imperative that she win this game, so that she can taunt Jake with it for years to come. But whatever will she wear? She flips through her rainbow of Mod minidresses. They are all adorable, showing a lot of leg and not much else. Not really suitable for indecent proposals, unfortunately.

She looks in the mirror. She thinks a moment. Then she goes to her lingerie drawer and pulls out her favorite slip. It is pale-green silk, embroidered with crimson rosebuds at the deep V neckline. The embroidered hem hits her mid-thigh and the matte bias-cut silk clings to her body like water. Nessie grins and puts it on. Then she puts on a pair of dark red leather cowboy boots that Alice picked up somewhere, and a red leather jacket. She puts on a gold bangle and a locket that rests just above the cleft between her breasts. She pins her hair up into a faux-hawk, gives herself a swipe of mascara and a coat of coral-pink lipstick, and nods with satisfaction. Then she goes down to meet Jake in the lounge.

They lock eyes. "Dammit!" they say in unison. He's wearing what is pretty much the Jake uniform, but tidied up. His dark blue jeans hug his ass nicely, and he's got on a tight black t-shirt that makes his stomach muscles look almost as good as they do without it. Work boots. Hair tied back in a ponytail at the nape of his neck. Suggestive grin. Glad eyes. "Dammit!" she says again. He looks eminently fuckable, and in this city there's not a chance his good looks will go unnoticed. She'll have to work fast if she wants to win this round.

"Losing your nerve?" he asks. She sticks out her tongue at him. "While you were taking forever on your hair, I asked a bellhop for some recommendations. Shall we, future loser?"

"We shall," she says icily, and leads the way to their waiting cab.

* * *

Four hours later, Jake follows Nessie back to her room. He is dancing around smugly while Nessie tries repeatedly to get her card to work in the door. The damn slot keeps moving around and she can't seem to pin it down.

"Let me," says Jake, prising the card gently from her fingers. "I can be generous in victory."

"Curse you," she hisses. "Curse you with all the curses of my cursed forefathers!"

"Yeah, yeah," he says smugly, kissing the tip of her nose as he brushes past her into the room. "Quit being such a sore loser."

"I would have won," says Nessie, "but I'm too wholesome! Not like you at all."

"What can I say?" says Jake, kicking off his shoes. "I live life on the edge."

"Well," says Nessie, "I at least get points for not getting carded. Which is good, because even my fake ID only has me down as eighteen."

"You get _no_ points!" says Jake. "You're a hot girl wearing underwear as a dress. They'd have let you into the damn Pentagon looking like that."

"You, on the other hand," says Nessie, "look like a construction worker. Which is how you won this round."

"Hey," says Jake, holding up his hands. "Everyone loves me. Men _and_ women. And can you blame them?"

"Yes," she says quickly. "Anyway, I bet those guys didn't really want to have sex with you."

"Hell, they _said_ they didn't want to have sex with me," he points out. "They just wanted to watch me jerk off in the men's room." He peels off his shirt, unbuckles his belt, then pauses and looks at her expectantly.

"Um, Jake?" says Nessie.

"What?"

"Why are you getting naked in my room?" Jake looks around him.

"This isn't your room," he says. "This is my room. I'm waiting for you to go away so I can enjoy my victory in peace."

"This is your room, huh?" she asks. He nods. "Well," says Nessie, crossing over to a chair and hooking a lacy purple bra onto her middle finger, "is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Jake stares at the bra. Then he stares at Nessie. He looks back at the bra. He stands up and walks over to Nessie. Very slowly he reaches up and slides the bra off her finger. He stands there looking down at it for a moment.

"There it is!" he says at last. "I've been looking for this one! Thanks, Ness. Okay, you can go now."

"Oh, you did not just double down," says Nessie, tapping her foot. "Since when is your chest twenty-nine inches around?"

"Oh," says Jake, dripping with mock-sleaze, "I don't wear it on my chest."

Nessie grimaces. "Okay, ew," she says. "I change my mind. You can have it. And the room. I'm gonna go look for some bleach to snort."

"Have fun with that!" Jake sings after her as she walks out on the balcony. She sticks her tongue out at him and then climbs across to Jake's room. She jimmies the sliding door open and slinks inside. She turns down his covers, kicks off her boots, drops her jewelry on the nightstand, slips into one of Jake's t-shirts, and then climbs into bed. She's asleep before her head hits the pillow.

* * *

Nessie wakes to a pounding at the door. "Rise and shine, Jake!" calls Charlie. "Things to do!" She looks over at the alarm clock and is surprised to see it's almost ten. She never sleeps that late.

She feels dehydrated and headachey, so she climbs out of bed and pads over to the washroom to look for some aspirin. She does a double-take before she remembers that she and Jake switched rooms last night; that explains why all of her fancy, Alice-given cosmetics have been replaced by a bar of generic soap, a canister of shaving cream and a stick of deodorant. He's got to have aspirin in here somewhere, right?

She sifts through the ephemera in his toothpaste-encrusted black toiletries bag until she finds what feels like it might be a travel box of Tylenol. Then she sees what she's really holding and starts to snicker.

"Rise and shine, boy!" calls Charlie, pounding even louder on the door until she opens it. Charlie does a double take when he sees her, and then his face grows thunderous.

"I'm up, I'm up," says Nessie, yawning.

"Dammit, Nessie," says Charlie, pushing past her into the room, "I'm gonna thrash that boy into next week."

"Huh?" says Nessie.

"Where is that kid?" Charlie demands, turning on her. "I have to go rip him a new hole to shit out of."

"Um, you mean _Jake? _ He's in the other room. We switched."

"You switched, huh?" Charlie narrows his eyes. "Then why are his things all over the place in here? And why are you wearing his shirt?" He looks down. "And _why in god's name are you holding those condoms?_"

"I was…looking for aspirin?" Nessie says weakly. Now that she thinks about it, this is a comically elaborate misunderstanding. Then they both hear Sue yelling at Jake two doors down the hallway and have to fight each other for precedence out the door.

"…_Wrong_ with you?" she is screaming. "Do you want to be in jail _for the rest of your life? _ Not to mention how scarring it would be for—"

"Cough," says Nessie. Sue whips around.

"Apparently they switched rooms," says Charlie weakly.

"Sorry," says Nessie. "If we'd realized you two were gonna have conniptions we wouldn't have. Lord almighty."

"So why are you wearing that giant shirt?" asks Sue suspiciously.

"It's comfortable," says Nessie. "And I left all my clothes in here. And you guys are spazzing out for nothing. It's actually making me kind of uncomfortable that your minds even went there."

"Yeah," says Jake. He hovers awkwardly behind Sue in his tighty-whiteys. "You don't have to—"

"Shut up," says Sue. "Why do you have those?" she asks Nessie, pointing at the condoms. "I know I'm not your mother, but don't you think you're a little young for that kind of thing?"

"First of all," says Nessie, "It's never too early to think about the health and safety of my sacred vessel. Secondly, you guys really need to stop thinking I'm seven. Carlisle says physically and mentally I'm at least nineteen. I promise you, I've been evaluated until I was blue in the face. Hybrids live in dog years. And even my mom knows I have sex with my boyfriend. My human boyfriend. Who's legally an adult." Charlie slaps his hands over his ears and starts humming loudly, then backs out of the room. "And thirdly, they aren't mine." Jake shakes his head frantically at her from behind Sue. "They're his."

"Oh, really?" says Sue, spinning around.

"So?" he says with an appeasing smile. "I like to be prepared. And I'm twenty-two, so…"

"Oh, you're _twenty-two_," she says, rolling her eyes. "La di _da_. Good lord, it's like Leah all over again."

"Hey!" says Jake. "No one asked you to—"

"Out," says Sue, pointing to the door. Jake pulls on his pants and shirt and starts to leave.

"I guess you'll be wanting these back," says Nessie as he slinks past her. Before Jake can take the box, Nessie opens it up and grabs a couple. "Thanks, Jake," she says, grinning. "Be safe!"

"Yeah, yeah."

* * *

Breakfast is tense. Jake and Nessie would be making faces, each trying to get the other to laugh first, but the mood is a little too solemn for that. And Charlie and Sue are both doggedly pretending the morning's misunderstanding didn't happen.

By lunchtime, the tension is pretty much blown over. After they all grab a bite downtown, Sue and Nessie take off shopping so the boys can do whatever it is a twenty-two-year-old werewolf and a middle-aged, moustached cop do together. Nessie enjoys the chance to hang out with Sue, who is (morning's lecture notwithstanding) actually a lot more chill than Nessie's immediate family.

"So, who's this legally-adult boyfriend?" asks Sue with a smile.

Nessie contemplates her image in a mirror, holding a sassy vintage bikini against her body. "His name's Will," she says. "He was the first friend I made in high school. He's really nice."

"What does he like to do?" asks Sue.

"Um…" Nessie thinks about it. "He plays video games," she says. "And watches movies. Actually, that's about all we do together."

"Oh," says Sue. "That sounds…relaxing."

"It is," says Nessie, furrowing her brow. "It was really good to have something like that when my parents were always breathing down my neck. But I don't know…I'm going to college soon."

"Damn soon," says Sue.

"Thanks, Sue," says Nessie. "I'm really excited. But I don't see how I can stay with Will and go to UCLA. I feel like the relationship has kind of an expiration date on it."

"It happens," sighs Sue. "All the time."

"Yeah. I keep hoping he'll break up with me so I don't have to do it."

"That plan could _never_ backfire," says Sue ironically.

"I know," says Nessie. "I just have to figure out how to do it. I kind of want to get it out of the way, you know? Would it be tacky to do it by phone?"

"You don't have much of a choice in that," says Sue. "You're staying in LA."

"True," says Nessie. "I mean, I really like him, but I just…don't think we go well together, you know?"

"That's okay," says Sue. "You're figuring it out." In an unexpectedly tender gesture, she presses her palm against Nessie's cheek. "You have tons of time, Nessie. There's no rush." She drops her hand and begins to look through a rack of cover-ups. "Truth be told," she admits, "that's why I freaked out this morning. I know I'm not your mom, and I guess if Carlisle and your parents say you're old enough to make those decisions for yourself…well, it's not my place to contradict them. I don't know your family very well; you're the only one I ever got along with. But I heard about a lot of things vicariously, and I do care about you."

"What things?" asks Nessie.

"Oh, just that your mother was always in a rush to put a lock on your dad. I don't know. Like I said, it's none of my business. But you're young. And I don't mean you're seven, I mean you're _young_, you're a young woman, and it's so fun to just experience youth without being tied down. I married Harry right out of high school. And of course I loved him, and I still do, but…well, there have been some regrets. Leah got so serious with Sam so young, and when it didn't work out she didn't have any perspective at all. Rebecca got married to a guy she knew for a week, and now she's stuck out in the middle of nowhere because she's too proud to admit she was hasty. It just seems like everyone's in such a goddamned hurry."

"Well," says Nessie, "I'm not in a hurry. And I know what you thought this morning. Because of the imprint and everything. But it just isn't like that with us. Jake is always really cool with my boyfriends. And you know he dates other people. We mean everything to each other, but we don't mean _that_."

"I suppose," says Sue skeptically. Then she sighs. "Ever since Harry died, I just…I've never had a handle on this stuff. All I can do is watch it from the outside, which admittedly is the way I like it. Harry was always good at knowing just what to do. All I can do is yell at people."

Nessie puts her arms around Sue. "That's not true," she says earnestly. "You care about us. That counts for a lot."


	19. The Second Contest

**This chapter contains spoilers for the 1958 Hitchcock film _Vertigo_. If you haven't seen it, first of all, see it because it is awesome. If you don't mind spoilers or if you already know/suspect what happens, read on!**

* * *

It is eleven at night, and Jake and Nessie are sitting out on her balcony. They are cross-legged, facing each other, cozy in their _R-C _ robes and surrounded by pillows requisitioned from Nessie's bed. Between them is a stack of pulpy novels and a deck of cards.

"This is a terrible challenge," says Jake.

"You're only saying that because I'm going to win," says Nessie.

"So?" says Jake. "I still mean it. Any challenge that I don't win is a terrible one!"

"We will see about that," she says. "Now stop stalling."

"I never stall! Much like the BMW M3 E93, a car worthy of my awesome driving skills."

"I grow weary of this aimless banter," says Nessie. "Pick a card. Whatever number you get on your card is the chapter you have to read. And you get points for style. Hit it."

"Damn," says Jake. "Okay. Chapter twelve of _The Slime Thing Walks_."

Nessie settles back with a smile on her face.

* * *

It is four in the morning. Jake and Nessie have dark circles under their eyes and raspy throats. The sky is beginning to go from black to grey in the east.

"We have to reach a consensus," says Nessie. "Them's the rules."

"Don't I get more points for acting out that scene with the werewolf of Calcutta? That was some of my finest work!"

"Sure," says Nessie. "As long as I get extra points for acting out chapter ten of The Sultry Sultan. I think I nailed it."

"Damn you and your magnificent skills," says Jake.

"Oh, I don't have magnificent skills," says Nessie. "You're just an easy act to follow."

"Zounds!" says Jake with a humorously baby-boomer affectation. "Foiled again. Okay. I will give you this one. I am not a good actor. And you did do that cool thing from the dragon scene. I can admit temporary defeat."

"Glad to hear it!" says Nessie.

"But the war isn't over yet," says Jake. "There is one more challenge left. And I'm going to win the hell out of it."

"I would expect no less, brave fool," says Nessie. "Now I have to go to sleep before I pass out and fall off this balcony."

"You do that," says Jake. He looks around. Nessie's entire bed has made its way out onto the balcony in the form of piled-up blankets, mounds of pillows and a dragon-slaying toga made out of sheets. "You need help getting your room set back up?"

"Nah," says Nessie around a yawn. "I'll just sleep on the floor. I can barely keep my eyes open."

Jake looks at her. "Ah, poop," he says finally. "You should take my room again."

"I could never," says Nessie. "Well, okay, I _could_, but I won't, because I don't want to walk that far. But I need my sheet back, in case I need to slay anything in my sleep...in a toga."

Jake un-knots his toga and hands it over. Then he helps her carry the linens back to the bed. She collapses in the middle of a nest of blankets. She is already halfway asleep when she feels the soft brush of Jake's lips on the tip of her nose and his hand gently smoothing her hair away from her face.

"Sleep tight, pretty girl," he says softly. She is deep in a dream by the time he closes the door behind him.

* * *

Nessie is in the middle of an awesome dream about slime-dragons in a harem when about a million pounds of wolf-man cannonball into her at top speed. She sits bolt upright and sends Jake flying. "Fnargh!" she blusters groggily. "Jake? What the... What time is it?"

"It's lunchtime," he says. "Charlie and Sue left a note. They'll be back at one."

"Should I feel bad that I keep sleeping in?" she asks through a yawn.

"Eh," says Jake. "I'm sleeping in too. I only woke up a half hour ago." Long enough to shower, at least: his hair is dripping onto his shoulders and he smells distinctly damp.

"Mm," she says. "Well, thanks for ripping me mercilessly from the womb of repose."

"I live to serve," he says. "You're adorable when you're startled. I couldn't help myself."

"Gee," she says. "You're too kind. So, what's up for today?"

"Well," he says, "Charlie and Sue want to catch a baseball game."

"Mmm," says Nessie with mock-enthusiasm. "Baseball! America's pastime, for some reason!"

"You've only ever seen it on TV," he says. "Baseball games are lame on TV. But they are awesome in person. And we're going to a minor-league game, which makes it exponentially funner. You basically just hang out and drink and pay attention to the game every fifteen minutes or so."

"I can't drink," she points out. "Charlie's a cop, and I am neither literally nor figuratively twenty-one."

"You'll still have fun," he says. "And if you don't, we can leave."

"Well," she says, "it's worth a try."

"That's my girl!" says Jake. "And I'll bring a flask."

* * *

_Jake was right_, thinks Nessie. Baseball games _are_ awesome. She is hooting and hollering and just generally being goofy, with Charlie yelling obscenities she's never even _imagined_ on one side and Jake alternately insulting and encouraging both teams in Quileute on the other.

"I need a hot dog," Jake says, turning to her. He stands up and starts down the row.

"I'll join you," she says, following. Hot dogs are something that she has honest-to-god never tried before. She has no idea why, unless it's just that seven years wasn't long enough for her to slip the expensive, organic, all-natural human diet her family keeps her on. She went to such a swank high school that there were never even tater-tots on the menu, and on the rez she only ate fish and game and the occasional homemade hamburger. She's had blood sausage in London, bratwurst in Dresden, and wiener schnitzel in Vienna, but now she wants to try the junky stuff that normal people enjoy. Like a greasy stadium hot dog in a Wonderbread bun, slathered with high-fructose relish.

"Cheers," says Jake, handing her the steaming meat cigar. It smells trashy-good. Nessie and Jake knock hot dogs and then wolf them down. "Well?" says Jake.

"That...was so..._gross_," says Nessie. Her eyes grow wide. "I'm gonna get another one!"

After hot dogs, they get soft-serve, then nachos, then a giant pretzel that they share. None of the food tastes good. But it all tastes exactly like a late afternoon baseball game in Oakland in high summer. Nessie knows that for the rest of her life, when she tastes canned cheese she will think of this day.

"What else do you want to try?" asks Jake, looking at her curiously as she eats a bouquet of cotton candy strand by strand. It tends to melt if she holds it in her hand too long, because her body temperature is so high. Nessie doesn't have much of a sweet-tooth, but she loves eating anything that doesn't look like it should be food; there is something inherently Wonka-ish about cotton candy. "I mean, in life. You haven't had a very normal childhood, have you?"

"I guess not," she says. "What do normal teenagers do?"

"Well," says Jake, "I wouldn't know. I wasn't normal either. Not at your age, anyway. Pack stuff kind of ate up all my normalcy from the age of sixteen on."

"Maybe we should both try being normal!" says Nessie. "I've seen movies, and I'm pretty sure my teenage years are supposed to be chock-full of shopping and fighting with my parents and playing spin-the-bottle."

"I don't shop," says Jake, "And I've never played spin-the-bottle, for some unfathomably stupid reason. But I do have fighting with my dad down to a science."

"Well, I'll be moved in to my apartment in LA by the end of summer," says Nessie, "and we still don't know how we're going to see each other for the next four years. We have to seize the moment, Jake! We have to do what normal people do!"

"Wow," says Jake. "Hot dogs, the new gateway drug."

* * *

They spend another few days in San Francisco. Nessie and Sue go shopping again, and Nessie stocks up on awesome vintage outfits that she hides away, ready to be used in the third and final challenge (Jake becomes increasingly curious and paranoid about what it will be, but Nessie remains smugly mute on the subject). They visit Alcatraz and Golden Gate Park. They eat unbelievably pretentious food and slurp nostalgic malts.

Then they load up their cars and drive on down to Monterey. They arrive mid-morning, have a nice lunch and visit the aquarium. Nessie and Jake get into an impressive argument about whether either of them could take on a great white shark, and by the time they have retired to the beach for a cookout dinner, their argument has turned into some sort of epic showdown.

Nessie builds a sand fort and begins imagining the politics of the people who lived in the sand fort. Jake decides that due to factions in Fort Sand a colony is required, and he begins to build one a little ways down the beach. Then Nessie, who is something of a god to the denizens of Fort Sand, initiates acts of war, and soon sand and gravel and shells are flying every which way.

"You will never win!" cries Jake, piling rocks under a flying buttress made of driftwood. "No taxation without representation! We demand equality!"

"Over my dead body," spits Nessie, hurling a well-aimed mollusk shell that takes out one of Jake's towers. "You will bow to the motherland, or you will meet your maker!"

"Wow," comments Jake, "you are a scary, scary woman, you know that?"

"Thank you," says Nessie prettily, holding the bows on the sides of her bikini bottoms and dipping into a curtsey. "I try." Jake takes advantage of her performance to lob a hunk of half-rotted wood and effectively destroy her fort.

"Evil overlord vanquished!" he crows. "Liberty and democracy wins again! Take that, imperial scum!"

"Oh, you did _not even_," says Nessie, surveying the remains of her pretend capitol. She sits beside it and begins to poke through the wreckage. Her subterfuge works, because Jake turns away in a victory dance, whereupon Nessie springs to her feet and launches at him. He sees her coming a second too late, and all he can do is put his hands off to deflect her, but they both go flying into the sand. Nessie thumps him with her small, dense fists, and he tries to ward her off without actually striking a blow. Finally he manages to roll so that she is pinned under him. He grips her forearms with large warm hands, uses the weight of his crouching body to keep her down.

"Your treachery will do you no good," he says, grinning and dripping sea-water from his hair into her eyes.

"I will rise again!" she says melodramatically. She considers spitting in his face for effect, but is distracted by how lovely he is with sweat beading on his nose, flakes of sand clinging to his eyelashes, and a corona of sunlight visible behind his head. She could never spoil that face. Not even in jest.

"I'm counting on it," he says, pressing her wrists deeper into the damp sand. She could fight him off, but doesn't. It's sort of nice to play the underdog for once. Not really her style at all, but nice.

"You kids gonna come get hot dogs or what?" hollers Charlie from halfway down the beach, and Jake's head whips around. Nessie hears his heart stutter for a second; in another second, he is sprinting hell for leather toward the little beach fire Sue has stoked up. Nessie lies still for another moment, her wrists and belly remembering Jake's heat, and then gets up and follows.

* * *

The next morning, they all have breakfast together and then drive out to San Juan Bautista. Nessie gets a few odd looks from the males for the perfectly-tailored, dove-grey vintage suit she is wearing, but she offers no explanation for it. She just takes small, ladylike steps in her pencil skirt and black heels, and gazes mysteriously off into the distance every now and then for fun.

At dinner time, Nessie changes into a strapless, peacock-green silk cocktail dress—likewise vintage—and the four go out to a rather nice restaurant for dinner.

"I'm glad you're getting a chance to wear all that stuff you picked up in San Francisco," says Sue, looking wryly down at her own pretty but unglamorous wrap dress. The guys are even less polished-looking, but Nessie doesn't care. Most of the clothes she bought in Haight-Ashbury are _Vertigo_-inspired. She's always wanted to swan about pretending to be Madeleine Elster, and it's impossible to swan effectively with her ultra-graceful family around. This is the first chance she's gotten and she's not about to squander it.

That night, she gratefully releases herself from the hardcore infrastucture of underwear required to mash her body into the shape of a Coke bottle with pointy boobs. Then she slides into a bias-cut slip that feels like heaven after a long day in stays, and heads down the hall to Jake's room.

"Hey, Ness," he says, opening the door. "So, what whimsical activity are we doing tomorrow?"

"We're gonna go on down to Santa Barbara for a few days. And before we do _that_..." She holds up her DVD of _Vertigo_ and grins.

"Well," says Jake. "I guess we're watching a movie tonight."

"Unless you don't want to," says Nessie, "in which case you are very welcome to get the hell out of my room, philistine."

"You have a funny sense of ownership," laughs Jake. "This is _my_ room. See? My dirty clothes are right over there." He gestures behind him, where dirty laundry can indeed be seen covering every available surface.

"You don't deserve such a nice room," says Nessie. "Look at how you've cluttered it! Besides, my room doesn't have a DVD player. We have to do it in here. It's my favorite movie of all time, and Jasper doctored this one so we can watch without it flickering."

"Hey, hey, hey," says Jake, holding up his hands. "I hear you. What is this, _It's a Wonderful Life _ but with birds or knives or something?"

"Actually..." says Nessie, "If you consider how creepy Jimmy Stewart really is in _It's a Wonderful Life_, and just throw in some dolly zooms and a super-hot Kim Novak without a bra, you've pretty much got it."

"He was creepy? Jimmy Nice-To-Meet-Ya Stewart? I don't believe it!"

"Jake, have you ever actually seen _It's a Wonderful Life?_"

"Once, when I was two. Or so I've been told by people who would know."

"Well, let me fill you in. He plays a weirdly intense abuser who is about one _Firefly_ cancellation away from murdering an entire town."

"Okay. Hey, did you say Kim Novak doesn't wear a bra?"

"Yes," says Nessie. "Remember, this was made in the fifties, back when she was basically sex on stilettoes."

"Wow," says Jake in awe. "I have so much to learn."

* * *

Two hours later, Jake is lying back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. "I feel dizzy," he says.

"Hardy har," says Nessie.

"No offense to the movie, but I figured out after about five seconds that Judy was Madeleine."

"That's not the point," explains Nessie. "That was never supposed to be the twist. There is no twist, really. It's a psychological thriller. We know Judy is Madeleine, and we know Judy knows that Scottie _doesn't_ know, and we just have to sit and watch her willingly erase her own personality for him. She lets him remake her into someone she hated in the first place, because she loves him and she would rather lose her own identity than live without him."

Jake looks disgruntled. "That is fucked up," he says tensely.

"I know," Nessie agrees.

"No, seriously," he says. "That is _so fucked up_. It's just like imprinting. It's everything I _hate_ about imprinting. This whole bullshit about turning into whatever the imprintee wants. At least Judeleine had the decency to be ashamed of it."

"She was the one doing the changing, though," points out Nessie. "She would have been the wolf in this scenario. Scottie was the one who was forcing her to change, and he was totally remorseless. It didn't matter to him at all that Judy was a complete woman before he came along. He just wanted her to slice off anything that stuck out of his Madeleine-shaped mold."

"Man," says Jake. "That just..._sucks_." His eyes are narrowed and angry, and his mouth is a hard line. Nessie doesn't usually see him so pissed off. She didn't realize the movie would hit such a nerve, but it makes sense in a way. Jake has always been very independent, just like Nessie. Which is lucky; otherwise they would have been perpetually miserable, forced by the imprint to exist in an unbalanced relationship.

"Hey, Jake," says Nessie, putting her hand on his arm. _I would never ask you to change what you are for me_, she thinks. _You know that, right?_

"I know," says Jake, and he looks at her appreciatively. "You never have. I seriously can't believe my luck, Ness. I've seen what happens, you know. I love my sister, but she definitely takes advantage of the imprint sometimes, to keep Paul calm. Or _sedated _ is more like it." Nessie looks at him curiously. "She was all screwed up from losing Becca to unholy matrimony," he elaborates, "and all of a sudden there was Paul, ready and eager to be shaped into whatever she wanted. And he's happy as a clam, no idea that the things that make him _him _ are slowly being worn away. Or if he knows, he doesn't care."

"Jake," says Nessie. "I'm happy with you. Exactly the way you are. I'm happy with the way things are with us."

"I'm happy too," he says, kissing her nose. "Everything out there—" he waves his hand vaguely at the window "—is so complicated, but our friendship is the simplest thing in the world. It's so easy to be with you. I would never, ever want to change that."

"You'll never have to," says Nessie, snuggling warmly against his side.

* * *

**Ten bucks says this is ironic foreshadowing! Thanks for your reviews, darlings.**


	20. The Fall

**Once again, beware ****_Vertigo_**** spoilers. Thanks for all y'all's lovely comments on my last chapter, including those to whom I couldn't respond personally because you commented as Guests. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

The next day is gorgeous. They arrive in Santa Barbara in time to grab an early lunch at La Super-Rica. Sue and Charlie go into paroxysms of delight at the chile rellenos. Nessie and Jake nearly clean the place out of chorizo and steak, and the jamaica is guaranteed to haunt their dreams forever. Then, full and happy, they go horseback riding and lounge around on the beach until dinnertime.

Jake and Nessie hang out long after the rest of the hotel is quiet, re-watching Vertigo and yelling at Judy not to be such a sap. After the movie is finished, Nessie invades the bathroom for a half hour, pinning her hair into an approximation of a chignon and prettying up her face with Kim-Novak-y makeup.

"Hey, what are you doing in there?" Jake asks after a while.

"You'll see," sings Nessie as she wriggles into a vintage, draped, black cocktail dress. It has long, demure sleeves, a very low-cut back and a revealing balconette neckline. "I hope you're not tired tonight."

"Not really," says Jake. "I can be awake."

"Good," says Nessie, coming out of the bathroom. Jake sucks in his breath as she twirls for him. "Like me?" she asks. Jake looks at her slantwise and an understanding smile creeps over his features.

"Is this why you made me watch that movie?" he asks.

She nods. "I was hoping to convince you to go along with it anyway, but I've decided to make it the final challenge, so you can't back out of it," she says. "We are evenly split right now, both having won one challenge out of three. For the final challenge, the one which will decide your fate as a possible driver of my beloved BMW, you are going to pretend to be Scottie from _Vertigo_. I'm Judy. And we're going to reenact her death scene, because it is my favorite death scene from all of everything, ever."

"Wow," he says, wrinkling his nose. "Um, okay. Listen. There are a lot of things I will do for you. But seriously, Ness, you are about to turn me into that one gay friend you like to sing showtunes with. You can never go back from that."

"Oh, stop being melodramatic," she says. "Or...start being _more _ melodramatic, actually. If you can't convince me that you are obsessed with the ghost of your dead girlfriend, and that you're crazy, and also that you're a lanky mumbler with acrophobia... Well, then you aren't worthy of my car." This event will determine the whole course of their future friendship. Specifically, it will determine who gets to make fun of whom forever and ever and ever, amen. Admittedly, she has rigged it so that no matter how it goes, she'll get to mock Jake for years to come, either by withholding car privileges if he fails or teasing him for it if he succeeds. And Jake knows it.

"Agh!" cries Jake, grimacing. "You are evil, you know that? If I do it right, then I will be forever branded as a person who unironically did a Jimmy Stewart impersonation."

"But if you don't..."

"I don't know all the lines."

"That's fine," she says. "Just do your best. And hey, if you can't remember what Scottie was saying, just mumble something unintelligible. Who'll know the difference?"

"Argh," he says. "Dammit," he says. "Ah, fuck it," he says. "Deal."

Nessie smirks and shakes his hand. "Don't muss me, now," she says.

"That's what I had in mind," says Jake in a ludicrous Scottie voice that requires him to only open one half of his mouth at a time. "C'mere."

Nessie goes back into the bathroom and starts putting on jewelry. "It's too late, I've got my face on," she says to his reflection. "I'm suddenly hungry. I'm going to have one of those big beautiful steaks at Ernie's." She drapes a heavy garnet necklace around her neck and spins to face Jake. "Help me with this, will ya?"

Jake smiles and stands behind her. She hears him swearing under his breath as he fumbles the clasp on the necklace. It's an old one she picked up when she was shopping with Sue, and the clasp is fancy and complicated.

"How does this thing work?" he asks in his Jake voice, which is way better than his Scottie voice.

"Can't you see?" she asks.

"Oh, there," he says. "Got it."

"Thank you," she says. "I'm just about ready. All I've got to do is find my lipstick." Jake is staring at the necklace in the mirror with his lips slightly parted, and Nessie smiles with pleasure that her best friend is willing to do something so stereotypically emasculating just to get a chance to drive her car. "Here," she says, snagging a lip balm from the counter and swiping it on. "I'm ready." She turns and faces him. "But first, muss me a little?" she asks pleadingly. Jake hugs her and nuzzles her cheek. "I have you now, don't I?" she says eagerly. She infuses her voice with Madeleine's lilt and feels very elegant indeed.

"How'd you like to go someplace out of town for dinner?" Jake asks.

"If you like," she says, and leads the way out of the room.

"Hey," says Jake, "Shouldn't I drive us, since I'm Scottie?"

"Nice try," she says, elbowing him out of the way. "Now, we couldn't do it at San Juan Bautista, because the bell tower earthquaked down like a hundred years ago. We're going to do it at Mission Santa Barbara instead. And I'm driving because I know how to get there. Now get back in character."

"Hey, you're the one who's deviating from the script," he says.

"Yeah, yeah," she says. The drive is a short one, and it's helped along by the Bernard Hermann soundtrack which Nessie plays from her iPod on the way. Fifteen minutes later, they are pulling up to the empty, moonlit parking lot outside the mission. Nessie pulls the keys out of the ignition, slides them into the pocket of her dress's swingy black skirt, and turns to Jake expectantly.

"There..." he begins, looking at Nessie and then looking up at the bell tower. It gleams beautifully in the light of the waning crescent moon. He seems uncertain. "Nessie..." he says.

"Jake," says Nessie. "Don't you want to commit?"

"Well..."

"Are you worried because we're desecrating someone's place of worship by reenacting golden-age films here in the middle of the night? Because don't worry, they don't use it as a church anymore. God will forgive you." He snorts. "We will be _very, very _ careful not to break anything. And there's no one around at night, we'll just pick the locks. And nighttime breaking-and-entering is a classic part of the American experience." He still looks dubious. "What's the problem, Jake?"

"Well," he says. "What if you get...hurt?"

Nessie bursts into laughter. "Um, Jake?" she says. "Are you kidding me? The bell tower isn't that high up, and there's a big old slanty thing leading right up to it. I wasn't planning to just fall on my neck like a rag doll. Good grief, have a _little _ faith in me."

"Sorry," he says. "I just don't want—"

"—To drive my car," she finishes for him. Jake raises an eyebrow. "That's okay," she says. "You're afraid. I get it."

"Hey, now," he says. "Don't think you can goad me into—"

"—Giving up on your dream? You know, maybe you should drive with Sue the rest of the way to LA."

Jake's eyes widen. "Okay, okay!" he says quickly. "Just stop finishing my sentences! And please don't make me drive with my aunt. She lectures!"

"Are you going to commit?" she says tauntingly, toying with her garnet necklace.

"Oh, you've never seen commitment like I'm about to commit," says Jake. "Prepare to be committed."

"Somehow I doubt that," she says drily, but Jake suddenly grabs her wrist and stares urgently into her eyes.

"There's just one thing I have to do," he says in a low, mysterious voice, "before I can be free of the past." Nessie smiles triumphantly.

"Scottie," she says, rearranging her features into an expression of nervous suspicion. "Why are we here?"

"I told you! I have to go back into the past once more, just once more. Er, for the last time." He gets out and walks around to her door.

"Why?" she asks. "Why here?"

"Madeleine died here," he says, reaching for her.

"I don't want to go," she says, "I'd rather wait in the car."

"No, I need you," he says, and he grabs her arm and pulls her gently but firmly from her seat. "You need to be Madeleine for a while." Nessie reflects on how well he's remembering the lines—or at least, the general idea of the lines. They've only seen it twice, but Jake's always had a good memory for that stuff.

"I'm scared!" she says.

"I have to tell you about Madeleine," he says, walking her slowly across the courtyard toward the bell tower. "Right there is where I kissed her for the last time," he says, pointing. "And then she ran into the church." Jake keeps his hands around Nessie's shoulders and walks her over to the door. "I was too late," he says, his voice rising in agitation.

"I don't want to go in there!" she says, and tries to break free. If Jake had been anyone else, he would never be able to hold her, but he tightens his grip on her arms and waits while she picks the lock open. _People were so much more trusting in the fifties_, thinks Nessie. Stupid lock. But she listens to the clicks inside the contraption until it gives and then turns back to Jake, who forces her into the building and over to the stairwell where there is _another _ lock to pick. This one is easier, and after a few seconds Jake is back in Scottie-mode.

"It's too late!" he says. "I heard footsteps. She was running up the stairs!" He begins to really hustle her, and there is something about this that Nessie didn't anticipate when she eagerly plotted the challenge. It is far more thrilling than she imagined when it was only a goofy game she was hoping to convince Jake to go along with half-heartedly. He really _is _ committed, his hands everywhere as he manhandles her toward the steps. "She was running to the trap door at the top, and I couldn't follow her. It's not often I get a second chance."

"Let me go!" Nessie cries.

"You're my second chance, Judy! You're like Madeleine now. Go up the stairs, I'll follow." He pushes her onto the first step, and they make their way to the top, him shoving and her resisting every step of the way. When they reach the top, he says furiously, "The necklace. I recognized the necklace." Nessie tries to run past him back down the stairs, but he blocks her escape and forces her into the tower.

"She was already dead," she says. "She was dead before I got here. I wanted to stop it, I ran up to try to stop it!" She cowers against a wall beside a window. The shadows up here are pretty atmospheric, and Jake is sounding insaner by the minute.

"This is where it happened," says Jake, looking frantically around. "You waited for everyone to leave and then you left, didn't you? And all you got was the necklace. You should never keep souvenirs of the kill."

"Oh, Scottie," she says dramatically. "When you found me I was safe, you couldn't hurt me. But I let you change me, I walked into danger because I loved you! Please, Scottie, please keep me safe!" She stumbles toward him and he catches her just before she falls.

"It's too late," he says, and all traces of that awful Stewart accent are gone, he's just Jake sounding scared and angry and intense. Nessie waits for him to nuzzle her cheek like he did in place of the other screen-kiss. She is counting down the seconds before she pretends to see a nun and backs out of the window for her grand finale.

But then she looks into his eyes and hesitates. He is staring at her in a way she's never seen before, but instead of feeling self-conscious she feels daring and excited, like his gaze has plunged a shot of adrenaline into her bloodstream. Suddenly she doesn't know if she can go on with this. It's a silly game, no different from all their other silly games. No different from when he pretended to be the big bad wolf in her childhood, no different from when they played micro-war on the beach. This is just Jake committing, exactly as he does every other time she asks him to. Isn't it?

"You love me now," she pleads, and she has a faint suspicion she's quoting something but she no longer knows what or why. "Don't you love me now?"

"You know I do," he says in a whisper, and then they both move closer, and suddenly their lips are locked together in what is surely the most confusing and meta kiss of all time. She didn't expect this, they didn't act out the first kiss, oh god, _this _ is what kissing is supposed to feel like... She opens her mouth greedily for him. Her every nerve ending is on speed.

_They don't even kiss like this in old movies! They just rub faces! What are you doing? _ her brain is screaming, but she orders her brain to shut up and sinks into the taste and feel of Jake's insistent lips. She was clinging to him before in an affected, old-Hollywood sort of slouch, but now she presses her body eagerly against his, standing on her tippy-toes so she can reach him better. She brushes her hands up his neck and through the roots of his hair, and shivers when she hears the needy moan this elicits. Jake's fingers slide down her vertebrae one-by-one until he has dug his hands inside the back of her bodice. Nessie feels the seams straining, which is hardly surprising since there wasn't a whole lot of room in there to begin with. But she doesn't care, not even when she feels a few stitches burst under pressure.

Jake yanks his hands out of her dress, curves them under her ass and hefts her roughly against him. She wraps her legs around his waist and throws back her head so that he can better kiss her throat. He is panting against her skin, his lips exploring every curvature of her neck and cleavage. Nessie isn't remotely thinking anymore; she presses herself against Jake's growing erection and feels wetness soaking through her panties into her dress. This feels amazing, this feels like everything she's been missing, this feels...this feels...

In a nearby mission building, the sound of a slamming door cuts through their moans. Nessie pushes herself out of Jake's arms and stumbles a few paces away. Her heart is pounding; her face must be vividly red. Nessie stares at the flickering pulse at his throat, trying to force her lust-addled brain to churn back to life.

_Hell no_, says her brain. _You didn't want me before, why would I help you now? Way to ruin everything, moron_. What just happened? Did she just—did Jake—oh, fuck, she just crossed a line that _no one was meant to cross_. Literally less than a day ago Jake, her best friend since pre-birth, was telling her how much he loved their totally, _one hundred percent unromantic relationship_, with no complications and no drama. And now she's rubbing her groin all over him like a cat in heat? What is _wrong _ with her?

Another door opens, closer than before. Jake looks like he is in seven different kinds of torment. Oh god, what has she done? Jake half-raises a hand to her, and she is freaking out way too much to be touched right now, she'll just end up showing him everything she's feeling and things will never be the same again. And so she does the most sensible thing she can think of: she turns and leaps out of the window.

"Oh, _fuck_," she hears Jake mutter. "Ness, wait!" But she is already landing in a roll and dashing away. Human Jake can't jump three stories onto a stone courtyard without at least twisting an ankle, so he must take the longer route back down the stairs. Nessie has some time to sprint to the car, where she can get really productive by banging her head repeatedly against the hood of her car. Oh god. _Oh god oh god oh god!_

Can she seriously not keep it in her pants for five minutes? Lord, she doesn't even get this horny for her boyfriend, or any other human being on the planet! Why did her shitty libido decide to suddenly roar into life while she was hanging out with Jake? Could it have picked a less opportune moment? She just plastered herself all over him like some wanton hussy! Less than twenty-four hours after he implicitly asked her not to!

"Ness!" Jake calls, running up. Even as a human, he's fast. She was relying on him to take forever so she could figure out how to undo the horrific clusterfuck she just created. "Nessie," he pants, "I am so, so sorry. I'm an asshole, Ness, I'm sorry—" She doesn't say anything or look at him. How like Jake, to take the blame on himself. She doesn't deserve him. No, _really_, she doesn't. "I swear to god," he says, "I didn't mean to do that, I just...oh fuck, can you at least look at me? Please?"

Unwillingly she raises her eyes. "It's not your fault," she says dully. "I did it too, didn't I? We both just...lost our heads. That's all."

"Ness, I swear I didn't plan that, I _didn't_...can you ever forgive me?" He reaches for her, but approximately ninety-seven percent of her brain is still heart-stoppingly horny and she can't possibly stop him from seeing that if he touches her, so she shifts away. Jake drops his hand.

God, she's so ashamed. She just did everything in _Renesmee Cullen's Bad Imprint Handbook_. She just slapped her poor defenseless best friend in the face with her untimely sex drive, and now he's freaking out, which is _so totally _ the right response for him to have, and he doesn't want to hurt her feelings, he _never _ wants to hurt her feelings, and isn't that the problem in the first place? No matter what Jake wants deep down, the imprint will always force him to bend to her will. He wanted to be uncomplicated, simple friends, and now that she's sprayed him with uncontrolled lust he's going to think _that's _ what he wants, and the sweet and sunny Jake she knows and loves will be buried forever underneath the imprint. How does she fix this?

"Theres nothing to forgive," she says shakily. "You did absolutely nothing wrong. You were just...committing." She smiles weakly. "I guess you win that challenge. You were so convincing that I really did jump out of a window. I'd hate to see you commit to _Psycho_."

"Oh," he says. "Um...thanks." He forces a smile which comes out as a grimace. Nessie sees a flashlight beaming around the mission, hears a voice calling out into the darkness where she and Jake are standing. She pulls her key from the pocket of her dress.

"Here," she says, holding it out. "You've earned it."

"Right," says Jake morosely. He reaches for the key and she drops it into his palm before their hands can touch. "Awesome. Thanks, Ness." He whistles some strained tune and gets into the car. Nessie goes around to the passenger side, walking slowly to give herself time to smooth her dress, tug the popped seams back into alignment. By the time she closes her door, she almost looks like she did a half hour ago. Except a lot more guilty, cruel, and remorseful.

As soon as Jake turns the key in the ignition, that fucking Bernard Hermann soundtrack slinks through the speakers. Jake and Nessie reach for the iPod at the same time, both in a hurry to change it to something less sexy. Nessie pulls her hand away before they make contact.

"How about Queen?" she suggests.

"Sure," says Jake. He scrolls through her music and suddenly _Killer Queen _ is blaring. Nessie winces. Well, okay. iPod karma strikes again. She deserves this. It's her penance for being a selfish horndog who can't distinguish friend from extra-special friend. Anyway, it keeps them from having to talk.

Jake gets them back to the resort, where a valet takes the car. Nessie is self-conscious in her stupid sexy Kim Novak dress, and wishes desperately she were wearing something as ugly as she feels right now, like a burlap sack or a trash bag. Jake still isn't saying anything, but he keeps looking at her like he wishes he could hug her. Why is he so good? Why is she so selfish?

"Well," he says when they reach their hallway. "Um, thanks for letting me drive."

"I always keep my promises!" she says. Except, apparently, when her promise was not to complicate things.

"Yeah," he says. "That you do."

"Um," she says, clutching her arms tightly across her own body. "Jake..."

"Yeah?" he says, looking anxiously in her eyes.

"I am so sorry for that," she says miserably. "I feel like a real dickhole right now. I'll never get to sleep if I don't think there's a chance you'll forgive me."

"Forgive _you?_" Jake asks incredulously. "Are you smoking crack?"

"Is that a yes?"

"Ness, I can't even begin to imagine how to respond to that," he says.

Oh. "Okay," she says. "Um, I guess I'll try to sleep anyway."

"Hang on, Ness, wait, I meant—"

"Good night, Jake. Love you." She lets herself into her room and leans against the door until she hears Jake walk back to his room. She is too upset to cry. Unblinkingly she yanks her slinky black dress off, tears the pins out of her hair and splashes ice-cold water on her face until it's numb. She rights herself and stares at her reflection.

"You asshole," she tells herself. "Sweet dreams, moron."

Then she lies down and fails to sleep for the next three hours.


	21. Dream a Little Dream of Everything Sucks

"Way to go," says an eggplant-shaped wooden doll painted with Nessie's face. "Way to go, way to go, way to go!"

"Hey," says Nessie. "I didn't mean it. Leave me alone!"

"Way to go, way to—" Nessie slaps the wooden face and it splits along its equator. There is a smaller face just inside, and it is also hers.

"Smooth move," says the new face. "Smooth move, smooth—"

_Smack_. "Shut up!" commands Nessie.

"You broke Jake! You broke Jake!" chirps the third face in this unholy matryoshka doll.

"I know that!" screams Nessie, striking out at the thing. "Don't you think I _know _ that?"

"Can't undo, can't undo, can't—"

"I didn't mean it," pleads Nessie. "I don't know what I was thinking, I just...oh god..."

"He'll never forget this, he'll never forget this," chants the fifth face.

"Every time he sees you, he'll remember that you used him in a Franciscan mission," says the sixth doll."

"He'll always know he can't trust you," says the seventh. "Forever and ever and ever."

"You were only thinking of yourself," remarks the eighth. "You knew what he wanted from you, and it was never this."

"You still have a boyfriend," says the ninth. "You've just fucked up two relationships for the price of one."

"That's gotta be some kind of record," gloats the tenth.

"I hate you," sobs Nessie. "I hate you, I hate you, I _hate _ you."

"D'uh," says the eleventh doll. It's lips are Nessie's lips. Its eyes are Nessie's eyes. "Tell me something I don't know."

* * *

Nessie wakes with the sun. She's only had a few hours of sleep, but with waking comes remembrance, and shame. Not for the first time, she wishes that _real _ magic could be real, the cool Harry Potter kind, not this bullshit vampire touch-vision-thoughts-shield kind. What she wouldn't give for a time-turner, or a memory charm. Failing that, the correct application of a large brick should effectively induce amnesia.

But she doesn't have those things, so she climbs out of bed and into the shower. She scrubs herself clean, scrapes the mascara from her eyelashes and the salt-tracks from her cheeks. When she gets out, she dresses in her most somber clothes, a grey shift dress and black stockings. She's in mourning for the simple relationship she and Jake used to have, right up until she squatted over it last night. She goes to the breakfast room and picks at a bowl of fruit, then returns to her room and passes out on top of her covers.

* * *

"Rise and shine, Nessie!" Charlie's upbeat voice rings through the door. Nessie looks at the clock. It's almost eleven. Her hair dried funny because she napped on it while it was still wet, and she has dark circles under her eyes and colorless lips. She considers leaving her appearance alone, but Sue would ask questions. Charlie would assume she's been up to some variety of no good. So she opens a brand-new tube of concealer Alice bought her—unopened till now, she's never needed it before—and tries to fix her sleepless face.

Charlie and Sue are both in annoyingly good moods. Jake, who is slumped at the table alongside them, is clearly not. He has dark circles too. And he doesn't appear to have brushed his hair. Nessie debates whether she should act like everything's normal or try to show him how deeply she is sorry by being penitent. She settles for a compromise.

"Morning," she says to everyone.

"Morning!" says Charlie.

"Morning!" says Sue.

"Mnghng," says Jake. Nessie stands behind his chair and begins to tentatively comb her fingers through his hair. She can see how tensely he's holding himself, like he's steeling himself for another shameless attack, so she backs off quickly. He probably needs space.

"How'd you sleep?" asks Charlie.

"Eh," says Nessie.

"Mnghng," says Jake.

"That good, huh?" says Sue. "What do you guys want to do today? We could go visit some museums...or there's hiking...but first things first, I want to check out the Santa Barbara Mission while we're here, they call it the Queen of the Missions—"

"Hiking!" shouts Nessie.

"Museums!" shouts Jake at the same time.

Charlie and Sue look at each other. "Whatever," says Charlie.

"It's just," says Nessie desperately, "we already saw the mission in Monterey, and honestly, how different can two missions really be? It's all just papism when you get down to brass tacks, am I right?"

"I _said _ 'whatever'," says Charlie. "Good lord. I didn't realize you two hated Catholics so much."

"Mm," agrees Jake. "Yep. Hate 'em."

"You people are weird," mutters Charlie. "Sue and I are going to go visit that evil outpost of papal power. We'll go look at some frickin' art after lunch or something."

"Sounds good!" says Nessie, watching them leave. "Welp," she says, standing and making a show of stretching, "I think I'll take a little nap now—"

"Nessie," says Jake, looking at her. Good god, he looks exhausted. Did he sleep at _all? _

"Yeah?" she says.

"We need to talk."

"We're talking," she says defensively. "Just look at us go!"

"Stop being so damn fake-cheerful," he says. "Lie to yourself all you want, but don't lie to me. Please."

"Yeah, alright," she says contritely. "Sorry." A group of patrons bustle loudly into the breakfast room. Jake looks over at them and back at Nessie.

"Okay," he says, "do you wanna talk in your room or mine?"

"Um," says Nessie. "Mine's a mess."

"Okay then. Come on." Jake takes Nessie by the hand and leads her—if not forcibly then _firmly_—to his room, which is no neater and no messier than hers.

"Jake," she says.

"Hang on," says Jake. "I just need to get this out. Kissing last night was...was apparently not great for you, and I am sorry for that. And I know you're beating yourself up over it, but you don't need to. Friends get drunk and make out all the time. And if it's not mutually awesome, then they just forget about it and go back to normal."

"But we weren't drunk—"

"Doesn't matter," he says. "It was late, we were performing minor vandalism on a Catholic church, let's just say the stars were aligned. You know what? It _happens_. I feel like such an asshole. I wish to god I'd just like, counted to ten or thought about Mark Hamill or something, but I didn't. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," says Nessie.

"Why does it have to be _anyone's _ fault?" says Jake. "You obviously feel uncomfortable with what happened, and I could pretty much strangle myself for doing that to you. I want you to always feel like you can trust me. And you can be mad at me. Hell, you _should _ be mad at me, I acted like a fucking adolescent turdweed. Just...don't be mad at yourself, okay? You didn't do anything wrong. _I _ was the one who kissed _you_."

"No, we _both _ started it," says Nessie, "but I escalated things." She blushes, remembering how she was rubbing herself against him without even a by-your-leave. "I shouldn't have done that. You know what? If you promise not to beat yourself up over it, I promise I won't either."

"Good," says Jake.

"So, we're okay?" says Nessie tentatively.

"Of course we are," says Jake, smiling. "Just chalk it up to one of those things normal people do. Nothing's changed. You're still my Nesslie. I'm still your Jake."

"Nothing's changed?" she asks. "I didn't ruin everything?"

"I promise," he says. "Nothing's changed. Nothing will change."

Jake sounds about as certain as Nessie feels. Which is to say, not at all.

* * *

Nessie misses Jake. Sure, she's still spending most of the trip with him. But she never realized before how physical their friendship was. They were touching _all the damn time_. And now they barely touch at all. She wants desperately to just wrap herself up in him, and she knows she can't. If she ever wants to undo the damage of that night, she has to start by giving him a chance to get back to his baseline Jakeness. Maybe when enough time has passed, the kiss won't be hanging in the air between them and they'll be able to pal around like always. But for now, caution is best.

There is one hiccup to this plan: Jake is sexy. Jake is sexy in the same way that the ocean is wet—which, incidentally, is also the way that _she _ is wet all the time now. Having seen him as Jake-the-Fuckable, she can't unsee it. There were lots of gaps in her understanding of him before which are now filling in with red-blooded sexuality. She relives every conversation they've ever had about sex—which is a lot, she now realizes—and grows warm when she thinks about all the things he said that meant nothing to her then and everything to her now. It's easy to blame all of this on the kiss, but in retrospect Nessie can see that things have been ramping up for a long time; she merely lacked the wits to notice it.

But she is noticing everything now, and with a vengeance. She finds herself staring at his body covetously, her eyes lingering on the narrow curve of his wrists, the tender skin of his neck, his lean hips. She wants to lick the bridge of his long nose. She wants to feel his sharp white teeth nipping at her flesh, wants to feel his naked chest pressed to her bare back, wants to know what it would feel like to have his—oh, lord. This isn't helping. Still, her eyes follow him like magnets, and she has a tight feeling in her chest that puts her on edge every moment he's out of her sight. She thinks about their kiss constantly, and every time she does she drifts away from her surroundings. As a result, she is unusually spacey and Charlie starts worrying. And Jake worries, of course, because he's Jake.

From the corners of her eyes she can tell that Jake is watching her as much as she is watching him. Waiting, probably, for another uncalled-for assault. She'll just have to prove to him that, kiss notwithstanding, she can still stand by her promise not to destroy their easy friendship.

Still and all, she does call Will to say goodbye; he doesn't seem surprised. They haven't talked since she left BC, and they pretty much both agree that trying to stay together would be futile. Nessie tells herself that she's just breaking up with Will because she'd planned to anyway, so she can be free to date guys in college. But she doesn't believe herself. Having kissed Jake, having learned to see him in this blood-thumping new light, she can't really see the point of wasting her time with anyone else. She wants to waste it with Jake or not at all.

* * *

**Side note: Charlie is my favorite in this chapter. He is slightly based on my own pa...and slightly on Mustache Daddy in the films.**


	22. Clarity

The four of them go to Butterfly Beach on a brilliantly sunny day. Nessie sits in the surf up to her waist and stares out at the ocean. Jake is a little way up the beach, kicking moodily at the waves that wash over his bare feet. Nessie has noticed tons of attractive bikini-clad girls appraising Jake's golden body. She glances down at herself and realizes that, in her strapless vintage one-piece, with her weirdly glowy hybrid skin, she is more than equal to those girls in looks. But the whole point is to get back to normal so Jake will trust her again, and so she doesn't chase down those stare-y hot girls and gouge their eyes out with seashells. Much as she would dearly love to.

Nessie feels a hand on her hair and looks up to see Jake crouching behind her. He has a strand of wet hair plastered to his forehead, and the tops of his broad shoulders have darkened a shade in the bright sun. The particles of sand clinging to his damp skin mock her.

"Hey, pretty girl," he says softly. "What're you thinking about?"

"Oh, nothing," she sighs. Involuntarily she leans against him, relishing his warmth. Jake sits beside her and pulls her close with one arm. Nessie rests her head on his shoulder and wants to cry. This is what it used to be like all the time.

"I know you're sad," he says, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Please talk to me."

"I was just thinking about what things used to be like," she says.

"We'll get there," he says, and his voice sounds sadder than hers. "If you want to be like we were, then that's what we'll do. We'll get there."

"Oh, _Jake_," she chokes, burying her face in his shoulder. Jake pulls her onto his lap and wraps himself around her, stroking her hair and delicately tracing his fingertips down her cheeks and jaw.

"You really want to go back?" Jake asks unhappily.

"Well, I mean, I..." She trails off.

"Ness," says Jake. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?"

"That night at the mission, did you, um...did you not _like _ kissing me?"

"Is that even a real question?" asks Nessie with a shaky laugh.

"Well, yeah," he says. "I still don't know how you felt about that, other than that you regret it. And I can only assume you regret it because you didn't like it, but at the time you seemed happy, and I just...want to know."

"Jake," says Nessie, "I'll never be able to kiss anyone else, ever again, because nothing and no one can ever compare to you. Liking it wasn't the problem. It's getting myself to stop obsessing over it that's the trouble."

"Well," he says cautiously, "I'm sorry for being so clueless, but...what's the problem? I liked it, you liked it...we're both adults and we love each other. I don't understand what's wrong."

"Everything's just so fucked up," says Nessie. "You didn't want this, you _told _ me you didn't want it. I _knew _ you wanted things to just stay simple and platonic, and I got so carried away, and now they're not simple at all. I don't want you to kiss me just because I'm your imprint and it's what I want. If you're going to kiss me, I want it to be your choice. And with the imprint, I don't see how that can ever happen."

"Um, Ness?" he says, holding her tighter. God, it feels good to be back in these arms. Even if she knows she can't stay. "When did I say I wanted to stay platonic forever?"

"After we watched the movie," she reminds him. "You were upset because of how much power an imprint has over her wolf. And I promised I would never force you to change, but then I _did_, I got all grabby and just because I'm attracted to you, now you have to be attracted to me, and it's not fair, Jake. Why should I get to do that to you? It's not _fair_."

"Wow, really?" says Jake, and for the first time in days she can hear that rumbly partial-laugh that underlines his words when he's amused. "You think I'm into you because of the imprint?"

"Well..." she says uncertainly. "Aren't you?" She looks in his eyes, and search as she might she can't find any trace of that old, friendly affection. All she can see is something that makes her feel nervous and excited, something almost alarming in its intensity.

"Shit, Ness," say Jake, smiling slowly, "I can't believe how adorable you are. I'm in love with you because I'm in love with you. That started _before _ we kissed. Didn't you realize that?"

"You are?" she asks dazedly. "It did?"

"Mm hmm." He kisses the tip of her nose. "Ever since we left Forks I've been trying to convince myself that I didn't want you like that, but lately that's been getting harder and harder to do. And you looked so incredibly gorgeous, and it was dark and we were alone, and I...lost sight of things."

"Well," she says. "I didn't know that."

"Apparently not," laughs Jake, but he grows serious quickly. "I thought I overstepped my bounds. I never want you to feel like you aren't perfectly safe with me. Is that what I did?"

"No," says Nessie. "I, um..." She wraps her hand around Jake's wrist and thinks back on the last few weeks: realizing how beautiful he was in the Japanese garden. The thrill and pleasure of kidding around in the weight room, the way the warmth of his hands lingered long after he'd stopped touching her. Her fear for his safety when they jumped off the bluff, her total serenity lying with him in silence afterward. Jake, making her laugh, making her smile, making her think. Being sunny and light-hearted, being serious and driven. Being silly. Being playful. Nessie can't play with _anyone _ the way she plays with Jake. She wants to play with him forever.

"Just to be clear," Jake whispers, "when you say _play_, do you mean—"

"Yep," says Nessie. She inclines her face and they meet halfway in a kiss that is full of forgiveness, full of promises. Her hands slither around his neck and catch in the wet tangles of his hair. The waves that wash around them are cold, but together they are warm and safe.

* * *

Even Charlie and Sue notice the lightened atmosphere over dinner later. Jake and Nessie can't stop smiling at each other and at everyone else. When they all turn in for the night, Nessie changes into her silk nightie and wraps herself in a fluffy robe and then pads down the hall to Jake's room.

"I can't get any sleep," she says when he opens the door.

"That's because it's nine-thirty," he says, grinning and throwing the door wide. "Come on, let's not get any sleep together." He locks the door behind her, and then they throw themselves at each other. Jake's hands immediately slide inside her robe, tugging up her short gown so he can rub his palms across her lower back. Nessie is kissing every part of him she can reach, breathing in the wonderful smell of Jake combined with the salty smell of the ocean that comes in through the open windows. He tastes incredible, and before she can stop herself she is sucking hungrily at the reddish skin of his neck and chest. He picks her up and carries her over to his bed, throws her onto it and cannonballs abruptly on top of her. Then they are laughing and squirming and wrestling, both too hyper and happy to be still.

Much later, when they have almost kissed each other to sleep, Nessie burrows against his warm flank. "Jake?" she says.

"Yeah?" he answers sleepily.

"What made you think of me differently? What changed?"

"I don't know," he says. "I'm always thinking of you differently. You get better all the time and I can barely keep up. But I think it started when we cut your hair. Before your prom. Remember?" Nessie nods. "You looked so different, and I couldn't tell why. You looked more adult. And the more I paid attention to it, the more there was to pay attention to. Somehow you grew up without my even noticing. It wasn't even sexual at first, just...different. But we've been so close this whole trip, and with all the playing around...I guess I just finally realized I can't look past you. I wasn't going to do anything about it, though. I didn't think you wanted me to."

"Is that why you never kept a girlfriend for long?" she asks.

"I guess. None of them were very serious, anyway. They knew it. I knew it."

"Mm," mumbles Nessie. "I broke up with Will, you know."

"Good," says Jake contentedly.

* * *

**Awww yeah. Go, you two!**


	23. Wet Dream

**So, oops, I just posted the epilogue instead of the last chapter. I can't really excuse my whoopsie except to say that I've been vacationing in Colonial Williamsburg this last week and forgot how to technology. To make it up, I am posting the last chapter AND the epilogue. Thanks to RinDey for pointing out the weird jump with no transition. Sorry guys!**

* * *

Nessie is swimming in the gulf stream. She is surrounded by everything that swims and a great many things that shouldn't: mixed in with the rainbow fish and sharks and otters are squirrels, deer and zebras. She rolls and flips through the water, luxuriating in the ease of swimming. She is warm and wet.

Nessie is swinging through the redwoods. A shark swings by her side. "Nice one," it congratulates her as she completes a complicated flip from one hanging vine to another. The sun is hot, and Nessie is warm and wet.

Nessie is running across a vineyard she's never seen before. Jake is running just out of sight, down the next row of grapes. She puts on a burst of speed and vaults over into his row, where he charges into her. They both go sprawling, and Nessie is smiling down at him, her legs pinning him to the ground. "Nice one," he says, grinning. Nessie is warm and wet.

* * *

The sun hits Nessie in the face and she rolls over onto Jake, who is breathing deeply beside her. Her underwear is soaked, and she can feel a pulse vividly between her legs. She peeks at Jake, who goes on sleeping, and experimentally she prods one finger under her panties. She's tried this before and it was always a waste of effort; she's never even known what it was supposed to feel like. But she isn't thinking about that now. She is only thinking about the tight feeling building in her middle. She rubs two fingers and then three against herself, faster and faster, and the tight feeling starts to spread all the way through her. Her breath comes in short huffs, and she tries not to whimper lest she wake up Jake. All the muscles in her legs and abdomen are tensed and waiting for something. Nessie rubs herself harder and sweat breaks out all over her body, and she feels like if she doesn't get something soon she is going to die. What that something is she does not know. Jake probably knows. He's so damn smart.

She turns her head and finds herself looking into two wide-open black eyes. Jake's face is lit up like the sunrise, and his lips curve up into a happy sleepy smile. "Good morning," he whispers. "Please, don't let me interrupt." He glances down at the hand that has vanished into her panties and his smile broadens. It isn't a teasing smile at all. It is an excited smile. A Jake smile.

And suddenly, her pulse explodes, and she feels waves of pleasure pulsing down her legs and up her belly. She lets out a strangled cry then involuntarily curls up and rolls closer to Jake, who is already reaching for her. Her whole body shudders in his arms, and her head is tucked right up under his, so she can hear his pounding heart and his hoarse breathing. Her shivers slowly die down and leave behind them a low pleasant throb. She pulls her hand out of her underwear, and Jake reaches for it. He brings it up to his lips and kisses her damp fingers, then tastes them one by one.

"So that's what that's supposed to feel like," Nessie whispers ebulliently.

Jake's eyes widen. "No way," he says excitedly. "Was that your first?" Nessie nods. "Okay, there could be an earthquake right now and this would still count as the coolest day of my life. Oh my god, Ness! Way to go, pretty girl."

"I hope I didn't wake you up..." says Nessie semi-guiltily.

"Ness," Jake interrupts, grinning, "if I had missed this I would never have forgiven myself." Nessie giggles happily. Her mouth is sticky and dry, and her eyes are crusty with sleep. Jake has pillow-creases on his cheek and snarls in his hair. "If you want—" he begins, but is interrupted by a knock on the door.

"Yo, Jake!" calls Sue. "Up and at 'em, we're driving into Los Olivos today. We want to get an early start!"

Jake's eyebrows shoot up. Down the hall Nessie hears Charlie knocking on her door. "Um," she says, "I have to go now. See you in a minute!" She kisses Jake quickly, climbs out of the window and runs across a planting-bed to her own window, which she jimmies open and clambers into just as Charlie is starting to sound annoyed.

"Hold your horses," she says, crossing the room and opening the door. "I'm up. Los Olivos. I got it. See you at breakfast." She closes the door and hops in the shower, and then dresses in her very happiest dress. Sunny yellow, to match her mood.

She and Jake can't stop grinning at each other over their breakfast while Sue and Charlie chatter about the vineyards and olive groves in Los Olivos. After breakfast, while Nessie is brushing her teeth and getting her things together for her day trip, Jake pops his head into her bathroom. "Just wanted to mention I love you," he says, and pops back out to get himself ready for the day.

Nessie meets her grandfather, Sue and Jake in the parking lot.

"So, who's going with who?" asks Charlie.

"I'm letting Jake drive my car!" says Nessie quickly.

"You are?" asks Charlie, who knows how she is about her car.

"You are?" asks Sue, who knows how Jake is about speed limits.

"Woo hoo!" yells Jake, high-fiving Nessie. "I mean, uh...you are?"

"Hell yes," says Nessie as Sue and Charlie turn away to load up the coupe. In a whisper she says, "Now that I know what all the fuss is about, there are some things I want to try on the way there." She hears Jake swallow thickly. "And who knows. Maybe you won't be good at driving my car. Maybe you'll get us lost by accident. Anything could happen."

"That's right," he agrees fervently. "Anything could happen."


	24. A Real Epilogue

**Again, sorry for the confusion. I originally posted the epilogue ahead of the last chapter, but it is now fixed. Chapter 23 is up, so read that before you read this!**

* * *

Nessie unlocks the door to her on-campus apartment and tosses her bag onto a chair in the entryway. There's a good smell coming from the other end of the apartment, and she's hungry. She follows her nose down the hall, past the living room that is still cluttered with moving boxes, and into the kitchen.

"Making dinner?" she asks Jake hopefully.

"No," he says, cradling his right hand in his left. "I was trying to teach myself to be ambidextrous and the knife slipped."

"Seriously?" asks Nessie, laughing. "Is it healed yet?"

"Nope," he says, smiling. "Want some before I close it back up?"

"Mm, yes please," she says. She looks at the wound, which is beginning to heal but hasn't quite knit together yet. "I should suck out the poison," she adds.

"Yeah," says Jake. "I shouldn't have been using the poison knife, but I was in a hurry."

Nessie brings his hand to her lips and sucks out a few drops of blood. It sends an electrical shot of pleasure down her spine and she has to force herself to stop. "Shit, that's good," she says. "Damn."

"You left your phone when you went to class," Jake says.

"Did I miss any calls?"

"Your mom called twice, your dad called three times, and Alice called once."

"And that," says Nessie, "is why I don't bring my phone to class anymore. Good gravy. Did you answer?"

"I would never answer your phone without permission!" exclaims Jake. "Besides, they still don't know I'm living here. That's one lion I don't want to poke in the eyeball."

"Mmm," says Nessie. "Good point. How was work?"

"Fine," says Jake. "The guys at the radio station threw Mike a goodbye party. We didn't actually get much done."

"Lazybones," teases Nessie. "So, I've been home for two whole minutes. Missing something?"

"As a matter of fact," says Jake, pulling her into his arms, "I was just thinking how long it's been since we made out."

Nessie feels her feet leave the floor as Jake lifts her to his height. She strokes the back of his neck with her fingertips and thinks about how wonderful it is that she doesn't have to hide her power from him. With Jake, she can be utterly free. Hearing this thought in her hands, Jake rests his forehead against hers and sweetly kisses the tip of her nose.

"My lab partner keeps asking me if you're my boyfriend," says Nessie after a while.

"Yeah?" asks Jake, grinning. "And what do you tell him?"

"I tell him I don't have a boyfriend. But I do have a Jake."

"You sure do," he agrees.

"And you've got a Nessie," she adds.

"Maybe someday I can meet her," he says, trailing kisses down her neck. She moans throatily and wraps her legs around his hips, knocking unwashed silverware off the counter with a crash.

"She'd like that," whispers Nessie. "She's so in love with you it's stupid."

"Didn't you say you were hungry?" Jake asks her breasts.

"I did," says Nessie. "I am."

"Me too," says Jake, turning to sit Nessie on the counter and sliding her skirt up with hot fingers. He crouches before her and nudges her underwear aside, then kisses his way up her inner thighs. "Let's eat."

* * *

**Thank you all so much for reading. Thsi was a fun, fun story for me. I hope it was fun for you!**


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